Interacting with Embodied Conversational Agents
The objective to develop more human-centred, personalized and at the same time more engaging speech-based interactive systems immediately leads to the metaphor of an embodied conversational agent (ECA) that employs gestures, mimics and speech to communica
- PDF / 682,427 Bytes
- 27 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 37 Downloads / 202 Views
Interacting with Embodied Conversational Agents Elisabeth André and Catherine Pelachaud
8.1 Introduction The objective to develop more human-centred, personalized and at the same time more engaging speech-based interactive systems immediately leads to the metaphor of an embodied conversational agent (ECA) that employs gestures, mimics and speech to communicate with the human user. During the last decade research groups as well as a number of commercial software developers have started to deploy embodied conversational characters in the user interface especially in those application areas where a close emulation of multimodal human–human communication is needed. This trend is motivated by a number of supporting arguments. First, virtual characters allow for communication styles common in human–human dialogue and thus can release users unaccustomed to technology from the burden to learn and familiarize with less native interaction techniques. Then, a personification of the interface can contribute to a feeling of trust in the system by removing anonymity from the interaction. Furthermore, well-designed characters show great potential for making interfacing with a computer system more enjoyable. Simply adding a pretty face to an interface is not enough to be an interactive partner. The agent needs to have means to perceive and understand what the user is saying and doing. It should be able to provide appropriate information and answer user’s queries and remarks. The agents have a human-like appearance; they ought to be endowed with human-like communicative, emotional and social capabilities, to be able to display appropriate facial expressions and gestures with their speech. Interaction implicitly creates a social environment where norms and cultural rules are expected to be followed. ECAs may be required to take different roles such as to be a tutor, an information provider, a companion or an advisor. Their goals may be to make students learn their lessons better, to give advice, to show empathy with users’ emotional states, etc. Their behaviours and words ought to be in adequacy with their role and goals. In the last decades, researchers have tackled these complex issues and E. André (B) Multimedia Concepts and Applications, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected]
F. Chen, K. Jokinen (eds.), Speech Technology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-73819-2_8, C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
123
124
E. André and C. Pelachaud
developed several computational models of agents. In this chapter we review some of the major projects and ECA creations that have happened in the last years. Our aim is to cover some of the most complex areas in the design of ECAs. Much has been done but there are still core issues to be solved. We highlight these as we go along in the chapter. By means of selected sample applications, Section 8.2 recalls the yet ongoing development of ECAs starting with TV-style information presenters to multi-party multi-threaded conversations between several ECAs
Data Loading...
