Heylen et al. 2009: Social agents: the first generation

D.K.J. Heylen, M. Theune, H.J.A. op den Akker and A. Nijholt Social Agents: the first generations, in Proceedings 2009 International Workshop on Social Signals Processing, M. Pantic and A. Vinciarello (eds), ACII 2009 Proceedings, volume Volume 2, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, ISBN 978-1-4244-4799-2, pp. 114-120, 2009. Embodied Conversational Agents can be viewed as spoken dialogue systems with a graphical representation of a human body. But the embodiment is not the only difference. Whereas Spoken Dialogue Systems are mostly focused on computing the linguistic dimensions of communication, conversational agents are conceived as intelligent agents that have an identity, a persona. Thus, cognitive modeling is often more involved in ECAs including the modeling of emotion. Whereas spoken dialogue systems are focused on the task, virtual humans are also equipped with social skills involved in interaction. This can take various forms. In this paper we review some of the approaches that have been taken in the first decade of ECA research, by presenting the social signaling skills of three agents we have developed in our group.

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