Basic communication and coordination mechanisms of human social interaction are assumed to be mediated by perception-action links. These links ground the observation and understanding of others in one's own action generation system, as evidenced by immediate motor resonances to perceived behavior. We present a model to endow virtual embodied agents with similar properties of embodied perception. With a focus of hand-arm gesture, the model comprises hierarchical levels of motor representation (commands, programs, schemas) that are... Read more

We present recent extensions for the intelligent virtual agent development platform Pogamut 3. These extensions are: the agent coordination language StorySpeak designed for the purposes of storytelling applications, support for gestures based on BML, the visual editor of reactive plans, connection of the cognitive architecture ACT-R, an educational application aimed at orientation in urban areas and finally an emotional model. Read more

The multi-modal rock-paper-scissors game is an interactive computer game where the opponent of the human player is a virtual agent appearing on the computer screen. The game is similar to the game between humans, the communication takes place by the tools of image and sound processing. Read more

In conjunction with Anvil and suitable annotation schemes, GAnTooL (A Gesture Annotation And Modeling Tool for Anvil) is a tool to annotate human nonverbal behavior like gestures and poses efficiently with the help of a skeleton. Using intuitive controls the user can quickly mirror the observed speaker's poses. The results can be used to build gesture descriptions and whole lexicons that transfer human behavior to interactive embodied agents. These agents can then be animated realtime... Read more