Embodied and Embedded Intelligence: Actor Agents on Virtual Stages

Athabasca University, experimental biologist, cogsci, cognitive aging.

• Simulations
  • Simulation of the environment
    • Procedural/core skills
    • (Driving)
  • Simulation of the person
    • Medical simulations
    • High fidelity mannequins
    • Hire actors to portray “standard patients” (also in law, other professional education)

• Animated pedagogical agents
  • Can be defined a animated computer-generated characters that respond to user input, adapt to user behaviour, and facilitate learning in a computer based learning environment
  • APAs important, increase “bandwidth” of communication between students and computers through paralinguistic features
  • increase sense of ease and comfort, fulfill need for personal connection
  • stimulate essential learning activities, such as exploration, attending, reflection
  • improve cognitive outcomes in memory, problem solving and comprehension
  • the persona effect
    • the mere presence of an animated agent will have a strong positive effect on learner and learner experience
    • related to Media Equation of Reeve and Nass - biologically predisposed to interact with people (rely on built up memory structures and routines that we have established to interact with people)
    • evidence for this is weak or equivocal at best
      • related to the visual appearance of avatars - how does this affect people's experience and interaction
  • Taxonomies
    • actor agents (programmable) (Payr)
    • conversational abilities (Veletsianos) - embodied?
  • endowing actor agents with conversational abilities (ie embodied intelligence) and historical appeal (historical figures) should enhance intrinsic interest and motivational pull
  • actor agents
    • Freudbot
      • story grammar design
      • conversational rules around turn-taking
      • embodied knowledge through narratives and stories, prompted by users
      • results: doesn't do that well on questionnaire

• Virtual worlds
  • computer-generated scene or world immerse themselves and interact with other users/avatars and in-world objects
  • is there an “immersion effect” (ref “persona effect”)
  • embedded intelligence - a capacity for the virtual world to respond intelligently to user behaviour in order to maintain a sense of immersion

• Actor agents on virtual stages
  • “Robotars”
  • Freudbot on Athabasca U Island

• Challenges
  • multiple users
  • controlling the interactional space
    • can't just let them loose in open virtual worlds
  • beyond conversational intelligence
    • gestures, emotional affective processing
  • the “uncanny valley”
    • subjective chat experience with Freud - no image condition, more positive experience and more likely to want to chat again