Axel Buendia

Dialogs taking into account experience, emotions and personality

This paper describes the DEEP project (Dialogs taking into account Experience, Emotions and Personality, adapted to computer games), which started in June 2006. The aim of the project is to provide generic solutions for the integration of autonomous Non Player Characters (NPCs) in next-generation adventure games. DEEP NPCs, equipped with a personality and a believable emotional engine, will use context-based information from the game environment and the player behavior to provide entertaining, rich and relevant dialogs.

Procedural locomotion of multilegged characters in dynamic environments

We present a fully procedural method capable of generating in real time a wide range of locomotion for multilegged characters in a dynamic environment, without using any motion data. The system consists of several independent blocks: a Character Controller, a Gait/Tempo Manager, a three‐dimensional (3D) Path Constructor, and a Footprints Planner. The four modules work cooperatively to calculate in real time the footprints and the 3D trajectories of the feet and the pelvis. Our system can animate dozens of creatures using dedicated level of details techniques and is totally controllable allowing the user to design a multitude of locomotion styles through a user‐friendly interface. The result is a complete lower body animation that is sufficient for most of the chosen multilegged characters: arachnids, insects, imaginary n‐legged robots, and so on. Copyright

From Informative Cooperative Dialogues to Long-Term Social Relation with a Robot

A lot of progress have been made in the domain of human-machine dialogue, but it is still a real challenge and, most often, only informative cooperative kind of dialogues are explored. This paper tries to explore the ability of a robot to create and maintain a long-term social relationship through more advanced dialogue techniques. We expose the social (Goffman), psychological (Scherer) and neural (Mountcastle) theories used to accomplish such kind of complex social interactions. From these theories, we build a consistent model, computationally efficient to create a robot that can understand the concept of lying and have compassion: a robotic social companion.

Determining the Important Subjective Criteria in the Perception of Human-Like Robot Movements Using Virtual Reality

This paper deals with the design and the evaluation of human-like robot movements. Three criteria were proposed and evaluated regarding their impact on the human-likeness of the robot movements: The inertia of the base, the inertia of the end-effector and the velocity profile. A specific tool was designed to generate different levels of anthropomorphism according to these three parameters. An industrial use case was designed to compare several robot movements. This use case was implemented with a virtual robot arm in a virtual environment, using virtual reality. A user study was conducted to determine what were the important criteria in the perception of human-like robot movements and what were their correlations with other notions such as safety and preference. The results showed that inertia on the end-effector was of most importance for a movement to be perceived as human-like and nonaggressive, and that those characteristics helped the users feel safer, less stressed and more willing to work with the robot.

Generic Spine Model with Simple Physics for Life-Like Quadrupeds and Reptiles

We propose a pseudo-physics system and a spine model that can be coupled to generate life-like locomotion animations of quadrupeds and reptiles. The pseudo-physics system uses minimalist particle-based physics and values of the gait pattern to generate the sinusoidal-like ballistic movement of the pelvis observed in nature. While the spine model uses simple geometry-based calculations and 3D Hermite curves to generate a flexible spine model, giving the animated creatures more agility. Our final system is totally controllable by the user in order to generate any desired style.

Towards Digital Creatures in Real-Time 3D Games

This paper describes a preliminary experiment made at the IIMLab in order to design digital creatures in real-time three-dimensional virtual worlds. The aim of the project is to integrate state-of-the-art Artificial Life techniques with real-time 3D graphical engines in the framework of the next generation immersive 3D games.

A Goal driven perspective to generate humanoid motion synthesis

In this paper, the authors propose a generic controller which performs the synthesis of complex humanoid whole-body behaviors. It also illustrates the combination of a low level controller based on weighted tasks mixed with a LQP, and a high level controller based on goals and actions. This association is useful for non deterministic scenarios, and it is illustrated trough three simulations.

From Objective to Subjective Difficulty Evaluation in Video Games

This paper describes our research investigating the perception of difficulty in video games, defined as players’ estimation of their chances of failure. We discuss our approach as it relates to psychophysical studies of subjective difficulty and to cognitive psychology research into the overconfidence effect. The starting point for our study was the assumption that the strong motivational pull of video games may lead players to become overconfident, and thereby underestimate their chances of failure. We design and implement a method for an experiment using three games, each representing a different type of difficulty, wherein players bet on their capacity to succeed. Our results confirm the existence of a gap between players’ actual and self-evaluated chances of failure. Specifically, players seem to underestimate high levels of difficulty. The results do not show any influence on difficulty underestimation from the players gender, feelings of self-efficacy, risk aversion or gaming habits.

Enjeux et problématiques de conception d’un jeu sérieux pour la prise de décision

Cet article presente les enjeux relatifs a la conception de jeux serieux permettant au joueur-apprenant de mieux comprendre la maniere dont il prend une decision. La dimension analytique est au cœur des problematiques de gameplay : quelles sont les mecaniques qui permettraient de faire prendre conscience au joueur de son comportement comme decideur ? La proposition de cette recherche est de questionner le jeu video comme outil favorisant la mise en perspective de la prise de decision du joueur. L’exces de confiance est etudie comme levier pour rendre intelligible le comportement du joueur, et analyser les mecanismes de prise de decision dans le cadre d’une formation. Les principes d’une methode de conception sont discutes, en vue de provoquer, controler et mesurer l’exces de confiance.

A Role-Switching Mechanic for Reflective Decision-Making Game

This paper introduces issues about a methodology for the design of serious games that help players/learners understand their decision-making process. First, we discuss the development of a video game system based on a role-switching mechanic where the player becomes the game leader of the experience. Then, we introduce game mechanics designed to induce a specific behavior, overconfidence, that helps to understand the players’ decision-making processes. Finally, we describe tools for measuring the players’ self-reflection regarding their judgment process.