Developing and Evaluating Conversational Agents
Conversation agents present a challenging agenda for research and application. We describe the development, evaluation, and application of Baldi, a computer animated
talking head. Baldi’s existence is justified by the important contribution of the face in spoken dialog. His actions are evaluated and modified to mimic natural actions as much as possible. Baldi has the potential to enrich human-machine interactions and serve as a tutor in a wide variety of educational domains. We describe one current application of language tutoring with children with hearing loss.