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Seminar "Speech and Gaze in Virtual Agents" (SS 2011)
Seminar conducted by Alexis Heloir, Maria Staudte, Michael Kipp and Matthew Crocker
Number of participants is limited to 12, first come, first served. In order to register, please contact Alexis Heloir.
The Kick off will be held on Thursday April, 14th between 2 and 4pm in the room U.15 of the Computer Linguistics building (C7.1). Following slots are scheduled every Thursday between 2 and 4pm (see table below).
Abstract
In this project seminar we will discuss recent
technological advances in the control of virtual agent
behaviors, and psychological experiments aimed at
determining natural and communicatively effective agent
behaviors. Apart from designing interactive gaze
controllers, a particular emphasis will be placed on the
combination of speech and gaze and on the principles that
guide the integration of these modalities.
Course participants will work in small teams of 4-5 students mixing computer scientists and computer linguists. Each team will be in charge of designing, implementing and conducting empirical study. This study will aim at validating one particular hypothesis drawn from one precise aspect of multi-modal communication in the context of dialogue between a human user and an animated virtual character.
In the frame of this seminar, the following resources will be made available to the students:
- The EMBR Character animation engine
- A dedicated state chart based behavior authoring framework
- A TOBI eye tracking device
- Tutors from the psycholinguistics group
- Tutors form the EMBOTS groups
The main goal of this seminar is to raise student's awareness about four key aspects of scientific research which are:
- the ability to work efficiently in a multidisciplinary team,
- the importance of defining clear and sound research hypothesis,
- the scientific rigour necessary to conduct an empirical study,
- the technical soundness and clarity of both implementation and exposés (in oral or written form).
Seminar Organisation
| Date | Topic | Speakers/Room | Material/deliverables |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14/04 | Kick off meeting | CoLi building, room U.15 (Computer Linguistics Basement) | -- |
| 21/04 | Tools and software presentation | Heloir et Kipp, CS building, room 119 | slides, EMBOTS Framework, example package, EMBR animation language windows installer, mac version coming soon. |
| 28/04 | Theoretical background | Staudte et Crocker, CoLi building, room U.15 | slides |
| 05/05 | Technical assessment | Heloir et Kipp, CS building, room 119 | slides + homework + groups |
| 12/05 | Project workplan presentation | CS building, room 119 | slides + project workplan (PDPC) contact Daniel or Anand to set up a Tobii meeting. A short tutorial on the FSM capabilities of the EMBOTS framwork written by Daniel is available here. |
| 19/05 | Implementation kickoff | Heloir et Kipp, CS building, room 119 | slides | New version of the EMBR animation language |
| 26/05 | Individual assistance (check office availabilities) | -- | |
| 02/06 | Individual assistance (check office availabilities) | -- | |
| 09/06 | 1st milestone | Heloir et Kipp, CS building, room 119 | slides + code |
| 16/06 | 1st milestone reloaded | CS building, room 119 | slides + demo |
| 23/06 | Technical checkup | CS building, room 119 | code |
| 30/06 | Technical checkup | CS building, room 119 | code and presentation |
| 07/07 | User study starts | -- | |
| 14/07 | Seminar assignment | room U.15 | slides |
Requirements (deliverables)
- project workplan (5 pages exposé) + presentation (8 min slides)
- first milestone presentation (8 min slides)
- implementation (code + documentation)
- user study results (to be defined)
- final exposé (to be defined)