Interaction strategies for an affective conversational agent

  • Authors:

  • Cameron Smith;Nigel Crook;Daniel Charlton;Johan Boye;Raul Santos de la Camara;Markku Turunen;David Benyon;Björn Gambäck;Oli Mival;Nick Webb;Marc Cavazza

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Computing, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, TS1 3BA, UK;Oxford University Computing Laboratory, Oxford, OX1 3QD, UK;School of Computing, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, TS1 3BA, UK;Oxford University Computing Laboratory, Oxford, OX1 3QD, UK;Telefonica I+D, 28043 Madrid, Spain;Department of Computer Sciences, University of Tampere, Finland;School of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, EH10 5DT, UK;SICS, SE-164 29 Kista, Sweden;School of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, EH10 5DT, UK;ILS Institute, SUNY Albany, Albany, NY 12222, USA;School of Computing, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, TS1 3BA, UK

  • Venue:
  • Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

The development of embodied conversational agents (ECA) as companions brings several challenges for both affective and conversational dialogue. These include challenges in generating appropriate affective responses, selecting the overall shape of the dialogue, providing prompt system response times, and handling interruptions. We present an implementation of such a companion showing the development of individual modules that attempt to address these challenges. Further, to resolve resulting conflicts, we present encompassing interaction strategies that attempt to balance the competing requirements along with dialogues from our working prototype to illustrate these interaction strategies in operation. Finally, we provide the results of an evaluation of the companion using an evaluation methodology created for conversational dialogue and including analysis using appropriateness annotation.