Embodied Conversational Agent Avatars in Virtual Worlds: Making Today's Immersive Environments More Responsive to Participants

Intelligent agents in the form of avatars in networked virtual worlds (VWs) are a new form of embodied conversational agent (ECA). They are still a topic of active research, but promise soon to rival the sophistication of virtual human agents developed on stand-alone platforms over the last decade. Such agents in today’s VWs grew out of two lines of historical research: Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence. Their merger forms the basis for today’s persistent 3D worlds occupied by intelligent characters serving a wide range of purposes. We believe ECA avatars will help to enable VWs to achieve a higher level of meaningful interaction by providing increased engagement and responsiveness within environments where people will interact with and even develop relationships with them.

[1]  J. Cassell,et al.  Social Dialongue with Embodied Conversational Agents , 2005 .

[2]  Johan Bos,et al.  Building Spoken Dialogue Systems for Believable Characters , 2002 .

[3]  F. R. Farmer,et al.  The lessons of Lucasfilm's habitat , 1991 .

[4]  Brent Lance,et al.  The Rickel Gaze Model: A Window on the Mind of a Virtual Human , 2007, IVA.

[5]  Anton Leuski,et al.  Checkpoint Exercise: Training with Virtual Actors in Virtual Worlds , 2011, IVA.

[6]  Randall W. Hill,et al.  Toward Virtual Humans , 2006, AI Mag..

[7]  Jacquelyn Ford Morie,et al.  Virtual Chironomia: Developing Standards for Non-verbal Communication in Virtual Worlds , 2009 .

[8]  Norman I. Badler,et al.  Creating Interactive Virtual Humans: Some Assembly Required , 2002, IEEE Intell. Syst..

[9]  Hao Yan,et al.  More than just a pretty face: conversational protocols and the affordances of embodiment , 2001, Knowl. Based Syst..

[10]  Justine Cassell,et al.  Fully Embodied Conversational Avatars: Making Communicative Behaviors Autonomous , 1999, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

[11]  Norman I. Badler,et al.  Dynamically altering agent behaviors using natural language instructions , 2000, AGENTS '00.

[12]  Stephen R. Ellis,et al.  What are virtual environments? , 1994, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[13]  Richard Catrambone,et al.  ECA as User Interface Paradigm , 2004, From Brows to Trust.

[14]  Justine Cassell,et al.  Embodied Conversational Agents: Representation and Intelligence in User Interfaces , 2001, AI Mag..

[15]  Sherman Young.  Whatever happened to virtual reality , 2004 .

[16]  Anton Leuski,et al.  A Virtual Tour Guide for Virtual Worlds , 2009, IVA.

[17]  Randall W. Hill,et al.  Virtual Humans in the Mission Rehearsal Exercise System , 2003, Künstliche Intell..

[18]  Stacy Marsella,et al.  Hierarchical Motion Controllers for Real-Time Autonomous Virtual Humans , 2005, IVA.

[19]  J. Michael Spector,et al.  Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology, 3rd Edition , 2012 .

[20]  Clive Souter,et al.  Dialogue Management Systems: a Survey and Overview , 1997 .

[21]  Nils J. Nilsson,et al.  Eye on the Prize , 1995, AI Mag..

[22]  J. Cassell,et al.  More Than Just Another Pretty Face: Embodied Conversational Interface Agents , 1999 .

[23]  Stacy Marsella,et al.  A Virtual Human Dialogue Model for Non-Team Interaction , 2008 .

[24]  Randall W. Hill,et al.  Steve Goes to Bosnia: Towards a New Generation of Virtual Humans for Interactive Experiences , 2001 .

[25]  Stacy Marsella,et al.  SmartBody: behavior realization for embodied conversational agents , 2008, AAMAS.

[26]  David R. Traum,et al.  The More the Merrier: Multi-Party Negotiation with Virtual Humans , 2007, AAAI.

[27]  Ipke Wachsmuth,et al.  Affective computing with primary and secondary emotions in a virtual human , 2009, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

[28]  William R. Swartout,et al.  Virtual Humans , 2008, Encyclopedia of Multimedia.

[29]  Maurizio Mancini,et al.  Levels of Representation in the Annotation of Emotion for the Specification of Expressivity in ECAs , 2005, IVA.

[30]  Randall W. Hill,et al.  Toward a New Generation of Virtual Humans for Interactive Experiences , 2002, IEEE Intell. Syst..

[31]  Eric Chance,et al.  Method for Custom Facial Animation and Lip-Sync in an Unsupported Environment, Second LifeTM , 2009, IVA.

[32]  Anton Leuski,et al.  COHERENCE OF OFF-TOPIC RESPONSES FOR A VIRTUAL CHARACTER , 2008 .

[33]  Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann,et al.  Generic personality and emotion simulation for conversational agents , 2004, Comput. Animat. Virtual Worlds.

[34]  Michael L. Mauldin,et al.  CHATTERBOTS, TINYMUDS, and the Turing Test: Entering the Loebner Prize Competition , 1994, AAAI.

[35]  John E. Laird,et al.  Using a Computer Game to Develop Advanced AI , 2001, Computer.

[36]  William R. Swartout,et al.  Lessons Learned from Virtual Humans , 2010, AI Mag..

[37]  J. Morie,et al.  Warriors’ Journey: a path to healing through narrative exploration , 2011 .

[38]  Joseph Weizenbaum,et al.  and Machine , 1977 .