intelligent agent Papers

An experimental approach was used to compare two types of web interfaces (text-based vs. conversation-based) to content on the life and theories of Jean Piaget. The content in each interface was identical with the exception of third- vs. first-person references. Fifty-nine students in psychology first completed a pretest of Piagetian knowledge and then were randomly assigned to one of the two interfaces. After 20 minutes of review/conversation, students completed a 35-item exam designed to measure... Read more

We aim at defining conversational agents that exhibit qualitatively distinctive behaviors. To this aim we provide a small set of parameters to allow one to define behavior profiles and then leave to the system the task of animating the agent. Our approach is to manipulate the behavior tendency of the agent depending on its communicative intention and emotional state. In this paper we will define the concepts of Baseline and Dynamicline. The Baseline of an agent... Read more

The area of animated interface agents is related to the development of applications that aim to improve humancomputer interaction process using software agents represented by characters or human figures. Although several projects are being developed in this area, there isn’t a method to describe criteria that ought to be considered to evaluate animated interface agents. This paper proposes basic guidelines for animated agents evaluation based on concepts provided by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). We... Read more

The rapid evolution of the Internet from a general information space to an electronic market space provides the users with the possibility to navigate among thousands of Web sites for comparing products and merchants, for making their purchases or for obtaining some desired services. However, from the user's viewpoint, such a navigation often requires an high cost in terms of time to spend on the Web to perform a satisfying comparison of the various alternatives.... Read more

The number of intelligent agents has grown rapidly in the last decade. Communication between user and computer can still be improved thanks to many advanced features of intelligent agents. Virtual assistants, present in e-commerce models, prove to be promising tools for a fruitful cooperation among computer-users. This paper outlines strengths and weaknesses of the intelligent agents according to the Human-Computer Interaction aspect. On the basis of this paper the following slides Intelligent Agents in the Human-Computer... Read more

Conversational agents integrate computational linguistics techniques with the communication channel of the Web to interpret and respond to statements made by users in ordinary natural language. Web-based conversational agents deliver high-volumes of interactive text-based dialogs. Recent years have seen significant activity in enterprise-class conversational agents. This chapter describes the principal applications of conversational agents in the enterprise and the technical challenges posed by their design and large-scale deployments. These technical challenges fall into two categories:... Read more

Responsive Virtual Human Technology (RVHT) involves the use of natural language processing and an emotive behavioral engine to produce natural, interactive dialogues with intelligent, emotive virtual-reality (VR) agents. RVHT has great potential for use in training interaction skills, such as those required for effective survey interviewing. However, our understanding of how people interact with responsive virtual humans (a.k.a. intelligent agents) is quite limited. Better understanding requires employing RVHT in training applications and conducting systematic use,... Read more

The development of virtual agents running within graphic environments which emulate real-life contexts may largely benefit from the use of visual specification by-example. To support this specification, the development system must be able to interpret the examples and cast their underlying rules into an internal representation language. This language must find a suitable trade-off among a number of contrasting requirements regarding expressiveness, automatic executability, and suitability to the automatic representation of rules deriving from the... Read more

Synthesis of lifelike gesture is finding growing attention in human-computer interaction. In particular, synchronization of synthetic gestures with speech output is one of the goals for embodied conversational agents which have become a new paradigm for the study of gesture and for human-computer interface. In this context, this contribution presents an operational model that enables lifelike gesture animations of an articulated figure to be rendered in real time from representations of spatiotemporal gesture knowledge. Based... Read more

This paper discusses pedagogical issues for intelligent agents to successfully serve as mentors for educational purposes. Broader issues about the nature or persona necessary for an intelligent agent as mentor are discussed, incorporating usability and human-computer interaction issues such as the anthropomorphic qualities of the agent and the social relationship between learner and agent. Overall, to be effective for learning, it is argued that there are three main requirements for agents as mentors: 1) regulated... Read more