Designing multiparty interaction support in Elva, an embodied tour guide

Although social research into group interaction has flourished since the 20th century, the technology of embodied conversational agents for handling multiparty interaction is still immature. In view of this, we aim at designing agent systems to support group interaction in virtual environments. We intensively researched group formation processes and leadership in terms of turn taking management and nonverbal behavior in facilitated casual social groups. Towards achieving agent autonomy and believability, we employ group interaction mechanisms in an integrated four-layer agent architecture. This approach takes into account group modeling, turn taking moderation and multimodal coordination mechanism to ensure appropriate coupling of the agent's perception and actions at the group level. We also present an application of an embodied tour guide, named Elva, in an interactive art gallery. The application demonstrates how an agent can act as a leader in coordinating and facilitating mu...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: ATAL
• Authors: Jun Zheng, Xiang Yuan, Yam San Chee
• Keywords: ATAL 2005, Embodied Conversational Agent, Group Interaction, Multiparty Interaction