An important development in agent design has been the use of so-called Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA’s). ECA’s are electronic agents that are visually presented in the computer interface with some kind of embodiment – human, animal or fantasy figure. Today they are commercially avaliable on small scale (see e.g. www.charamel.com). There is some controversy about the application of ECA’s in user interfaces, however. Advocates assume that they provide a more efficient and natural dialogue, while opponents belief that ECA’s hamper the interaction. In this project we would like to build an infrastructure where various aspects of ECA’s can be tested.
Aim of the project is to build an experimental environment where ECA’s can be tested in various circumstances. Subtopics are: requirements analysis, design, implementation and testing, evaluation and documentation.
Robbert-Jan Beun (rj@cs.uu.nl) and Rogier van Eijk (rogier@cs.uu.nl)
The project should be carried out by two persons (preferably information ànd computing science).
Background knowledge: Java, Usability engineering and Human-Computer Interaction.
Internal: yes
Starting Date: whenever you want
Beun, R.J., de Vos, E. & Witteman, C.L.M. (2003) Embodied Conversational Agents: effects on memory performance and anthropormorphisation. In Rist, T., Aylett, R., Ballin, D. & Rickel, J. (eds.) Intelligent Virual Agents. Proceedings 4th International Workshop IVA2003 Kloster Irsee. LNAI 2792. Berlin: Springer. pp. 315-319.
Cassell, J. “Nudge nudge wink wink: elements of face to face conversation for embodied conversational agents.” In J. Cassell, S. Prevost, J. Sullivan and E. Chur-chill, eds. Embodied Conversational Agents, Cambridge:The MIT Press, 2000: 1-20
Vos, E. de (2002) Look at that doggy in my Windows. On the effects of anthropormorphisation in human-agent interaction. Afstudeerscriptie CKI.