Agents with Character

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Agents with Character
Evaluation of Empathic Agents in Digital Dossiers
Johan F. Hoorn
Anton Eliëns
VU Amsterdam
Zhisheng Huang
Henriette C. van Vugt
Elly A. Konijn
Communication Science
Cees T. Visser
Artificial Intelligence
Information Management Software Engineering
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structure

• introduction
• user engagement with empathic agents
• PEFiC in digital dossiers
• evaluation scenarios
• development of the MetaMorph box
• interactive PEFiC powered by DLP/STEP
• some issues and pitfalls
• conclusions

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carry back home message

• an empirically tested model of engaging fiction
  characters (PEFiC)
• test scenarios in the real-life application
  domain of digital dossiers
• DLPX3D/STEP technology to support virtual
  environments and characters

all the ingredients needed to conduct proper
agent research
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user engagement with empathic agents
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embodied agents as fictional characters
PEFiC

• phase 1 -- encoding
• ethics -- good vs. bad
• aesthetics -- beauty vs ugliness
• epistemics -- realistic vs. unrealistic
• phase 2 -- comparison
• establishing personal relevance, mutual
  similarity and valence towards fictional
  character
• phase 3 -- response
• involvement vs distance -- tendency to approach
  or avoid

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PEFiC in digital dossiers
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evaluation scenarios
...

• navigation -- pure interactivity
• guided tours -- using some narrative structure
• agent-mediated -- navigation and guided tours

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development of the MetaMorph box
64 systematically varied agent types
task relevance
valence
ethics
aesthetics
ephistemics
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interactive PEFiC powered by DLP/STEP
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DLP/STEP
programming platform

• declarative language -- for agent support
• multiple threads of control -- for multiple
  shared objects
• distributed communication -- networking
  capabilities (TCP/IP)

scripting behavior

• convenience -- for non-professional authors
• compositional semantics -- combining operations
• re-definability -- for high-level specification
  of actions
• parametrization -- for the adaptation of actions
  
• interaction -- with a (virtual) environment

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agents in multi-user virtual environments
mixed-media presentations with commentators
Tai-Chi, domestic servants and conducting music
DLP/STEP applications

• tai-chi demonstrator
• grasping and reaching, using inverse kinematics
  and reasoning
• facial animation (with text-to-speech)
• virtual presenter -- presenting powerpoint
  presentation

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some issues and pitfalls
complexity of domain of cultural heritage
limited number of experts with sufficient
knowlegde
task prepare an installation of a work of art
in a museum
we should restrict the users task to exploration
or tasks requiring limited expertise
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conclusions
we presented

• an empirically tested model of engaging fiction
  characters (PEFiC)
• test scenarios in the real-life application
  domain of digital dossiers
• DLPX3D/STEP technology to support virtual
  environments and characters

all the ingredients needed to conduct proper
agent research