Multiple and Extended Interactions with Affective Embodied Agents

2003

The aim of the experimental study described in this paper is to investigate the effect of an Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) on the affective state of users. The agent expresses affect by verbal and nonverbal behaviors such as linguistic style and gestures. In this study, we focus on users' emotional state that is derived from physiological signals of the user. Our results suggest that an agent with appropriate verbal and nonverbal behaviors may decrease the intensity of users' negative emotions.

Abstract Recent research has suggested that affective embodied agents that can effectively express simulated emotion have the potential to build and maintain long-term relationships with users. We present our experiences in this space and detail the wide array of design and evaluation issues we had to take into consideration when building an affective embodied agent that assists users with improving poor dietary habits. An overview of our experimental progress is also provided.

International Journal of Affective Engineering, 2013

The visual representations of intelligent agents draw increasing attention recently. Additionally, the first impression of humans toward agents is the visual representations. How these man-made creatures' looks determine users' will to interact with. This research focuses on the appearances of embodied agents to investigate the affective interactions between users and agents. This study conducted one experiment to study the affective influences of embodied conversational agents (ECAs) on users in the learning tasks. A one-factor-at-three-levels counterbalanced by within-subjects design is employed in this study. This study asks whether there are significant experiential differences between ECAs when they are represented by different character classifications, such as character preference, user engagement and user-agent relationships. The main contributions of this study are summarised as follows: (1) character classifications can be related to human affective factors; and (2) there may be significant relations among character preference, engagement and user-agent relationships.

2008

An important strand of research that is often neglected in the field of affective computing is that of how users respond to simulated displays of emotion. We present an overview of the few studies that have explicitly investigated this space and discuss a number of issues related to simulated emotion research. An overview of our own work in this area is then provided, along with forthcoming studies that we plan to conduct. We conclude with a number of suggestions of where future research in this space should focus.

Methods and Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 2004

Affective Computing, 2008

Human computer intelligent interaction is an emerging field aimed at providing natural ways for humans to use computers as aids. It is argued that for a computer to be able to interact with humans it needs to have the communication skills of humans. One of these skills is the affective aspect of communication, which is recognized to be a crucial part of human intelligence and has been argued to be more fundamental in human behaviour and success in social life than intellect (Vesterinen, 2001; Pantic, 2005). Embodied conversational agents, ECAs (Casell et al., 2000), are graphical interfaces capable of using verbal and non-verbal modes of communication to interact with users in computerbased environments. These agents are sometimes just as an animated talking face, may be displaying simple facial expressions and, when using speech synthesis, with some kind of lip synchronization, and sometimes they have sophisticated 3D graphical representation, with complex body movements and facial expressions. An important strand of emotion-related research in human-computer interaction is the simulation of emotional expressions made by embodied computer agents (Creed & Beale, 2005). The basic requirement for a computer to express emotions is to have channels of communication such as voice, image and an ability to communicate affection over those channels. Therefore, interface designers often emulate multimodal human-human communication by including emotional expressions and statements in their interfaces through the use of textual content, speech (synthetic and recorded) and synthetic facial expressions, making the agents truly "social actors" (Reeves & Nass, 1996). Several studies have illustrated that our ability to recognise the emotional facial expressions of embodied computer agents is very similar to that of identifying human facial expressions (Bartneck, 2001). Related to agent's voice, experiments have demonstrated that subjects can recognize the emotional expressions of an agent (Creed & Beale, 2006) whose voice varies widely in pitch, tempo and loudness and its facial expressions match the emotion it is expressing. But, what about the impact of these social actors? Recent research focuses on the psychological impact of affective agents endowed with the ability to behave empathically with the user (

International Journal of …, 2003

2003

Abstract A salient feature of the ambient intelligent home of the future will be the natural interaction between the home and its inhabitants through speech. An embodied home character is necessary to ensure a natural dialogue by continuously providing intuitive feedback in the form of conversational and emotional body language.

2010

Acknowledging the social functions that emotions serve, there has been growing interest in the interpersonal effect of emotion in human decision making. Following the paradigm of experimental games from social psychology and experimental economics, we explore the interpersonal effect of emotions expressed by embodied agents on human decision making.

2002

Abstract Our goal is to develop a believable embodied agent able to dialogue with a user. In particular, we aim at making an agent that can also combine facial expressions in a complex and subtle way, just like a human agent does. We first review a taxonomy of communicative functions that our agent is able to express non-verbally; but we point out that, due to the complexity of communication, in some cases different information can be provided at once by different parts and actions of an agent's face.