Papers about Personality

We present a novel approach for creating intelligent conversational agents based on a “schizophrenic” model implemented using the EVA (Evolutionary Virtual Agent) nano-agent architecture. The Ms House experiment developed using this approach is compared with Eliza and the Alice chatterbot. Read more

In this paper we introduce the nano-agent bio-inspired architecture and its programming language called nanoScheme. We describe an application example developed using this software environment: an online self-animated character that interacts using natural language and emotional expressions. This virtual character is based on a “schizophrenic” model in which the character has multiple distinct personalities, each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the user. Moreover, the qualitative efficiency of this prototype is then... Read more

Sensitive Artificial Listeners (SAL) are virtual dialogue partners based on audiovisual analysis and synthesis. Despite their very limited verbal understanding, they intend to engage the user in a conversation by paying attention to the user’s emotions and nonverbal expressions. The SAL characters have their own emotionally defined personality, and attempt to drag the user towards their dominant emotion through a combination of verbal and non-verbal expression. The demonstrator shows the publicly available, fully autonomous SAL system. Read more

For centuries artists have been exploring color to express emotions. Following this insight, the paper describes an approach to learn how to use color to influence the perception of emotions in virtual humans. First, a model of lighting and filters inspired on the visual arts is integrated with a virtual human platform to manipulate color. Next, an evolutionary model, based on genetic algorithms, is created to evolve mappings between emotions and lighting and filter parameters.... Read more

A chatbot is a program capable of conversing in natural language. First conceived in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum with the creation of ELIZA, chatbots rose to popularity in the 90s – partly because of advances in technology, but also because of the appearance of the Loebner Prize competition. This competition is based on Turing’s imitation game, which is the original ‘Turing Test’. Although it has dominated the chatbot scene in recent years, it has been... Read more

Users expect characters in role-playing games to be proactive and social, but these characters fail to deliver in this respect due to limitations of traditional game AI programming approaches. BDI-based approaches are suited for development of proactive systems, such as NPCs in games. This paper argues that a BDI-based approach is also highly suited for developing social NPCs in a principled way. Read more

How do we construct credible personalities? The current SAL (Sensitive Artificial Listeners) characters were constructed intuitively and can be unconvincing. In addressing these issues, this paper considers a theory of personality and associated emotional traits, and discusses how behaviours associated with personality types in people may be adapted to develop characteristics of virtual agents. Our objective is to ensure that behavioural perceptions of a virtual agent credibly reflect the agent's 'actual' personality as prescribed. Read more

Multimodal user interfaces are becoming more and more important in human-machine communication. Essential representatives of such interfaces are virtual agents that aim to act like humans in the way they employ gestures, facial expression, posture and prosody to convey their emotions in face-to-face communication. Furthermore, if we employ a presentation team [1] to convey facts, the performance becomes more entertaining for the audience. Distinct characters should have different roles and personality profiles. Moreover if we... Read more

DEIRA is a virtual agent commenting on virtual horse races in real time. DEIRA analyses the state of the race, acts emotionally and comments about the situation in a believable and engaging way, using synthesized speech and facial expressions. In this paper we discuss the challenges, explain the computational models for the cognitive, emotional and communicative behavior, and account on implementation and feedback from users. Read more

When building conversational agents that are to take part in social interaction with humans, an important question is whether psychological concepts like emotions or personality of the agents need to be incorporated. In this chapter we argue for the integration of an emotion system into a conversational agent to enable the simulation of having “own emotions”. We first clarify the concept of emotions and we discuss different approaches to modeling emotions and personality in artificial systems.... Read more