Mei Yii Lim

Creating adaptive affective autonomous NPCs

The paper reports work to create believable autonomous Non Player Characters in Video games in general and educational role play games in particular. It aims to increase their ability to respond appropriately to the player’s actions both cognitively and emotionally by integrating two models: the cognitive appraisal-based FAtiMA architecture, and the drives-based PSI model. We discuss the modelling of adaptive affective autonomous characters based on a biologically-inspired theory of human action regulation taking into account perception, motivation, emotions, memory, learning and planning. These agents populate an educational Role Playing Game, ORIENT (Overcoming Refugee Integration with Empathic Novel Technology) dealing with the cultural-awareness problem for children aged 13–14.

A Socially-Aware Memory for Companion Agents

Memory is a vital capability for intelligent social Companions. In this paper, we introduce a simple memory model that allows a Companion to maintain a long-term relationship with the user by remembering past experiences in order to personalise interaction. Additionally, we implemented a situational forgetting mechanism that gives the Companion the ability to protect the users privacy by not disclosing sensitive data. Two test scenarios are used to demonstrate these abilities in our Companions.

Improving Adaptiveness in Autonomous Characters

Much research has been carried out to build emotion regulation models for autonomous agents that can create suspension of disbelief in human audiences or users. However, most models up-to-date concentrate either on the physiological aspect or the cognitive aspect of emotion. In this paper, an architecture to balance the Physiological vs Cognitive dimensions for creation of life-like autonomous agents is proposed. The resulting architecture will be employed in ORIENT which is part of the EU-FP6 project eCircus. An explanation of the existing architecture, FAtiMA focusing on its benefits and flaws is provided. This is followed by a description of the proposed architecture that combines FAtiMA and the PSI motivational system. Some inspiring work is also reviewed. Finally, a conclusion and directions for future work are given.

An initial memory model for virtual and robot companions supporting migration and long-term interaction

This work proposes an initial memory model for a long-term artificial companion, which migrates among virtual and robot platforms based on the context of interactions with the human user. This memory model enables the companion to remember events that are relevant or significant to itself or to the user. For other events which are either ethically sensitive or with a lower long-term value, the memory model supports forgetting through the processes of generalisation and memory restructuring. The proposed memory model draws inspiration from the human short-term and long-term memories. The short-term memory will support companions in focusing on the stimuli that are relevant to their current active goals within the environment. The long-term memory will contain episodic events that are chronologically sequenced and derived from the companions interaction history both with the environment and the user. There are two key questions that we try to address in this work: 1) What information should the companion remember in order to generate appropriate behaviours and thus smooth the interaction with the user? And, 2) What are the relevant aspects to take into consideration during the design of memory for a companion that can have different types of virtual and physical bodies? Finally, we show an implementation plan of the memory model, focusing on issues of information grounding, activation and sensing based on specific hardware platforms.

Culture–personality based affective model

Bringing culture and personality in a combination with emotions requires bringing three different theories together. In this paper, we discuss an approach for combining Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, BIG five personality parameters and PSI theory of emotions to come up with an emergent affective character model.

Memory Models for Intelligent Social Companions

Memory gives us identity, shapes our personality and drives our reactions to different situations in life. We actively create expectations, track the fulfilment of these expectations and dynamically modify our memory when new experiences demand it. Yet up to date, many important social aspects of human memory to artificial intelligent social agents have not been given much attention. Thus, this article is going to review on the current state-of-the-art of memory models for social companions, particularly on memory aspects that have been explored and proved useful and other potential memory aspects that would be beneficial if included.

Narrative construction in a mobile tour guide

Storytelling capabilities are vital aspect of a tour guide. In this paper, we present a mobile tour guide that emulates a real guides behaviour by presenting stories based on the users interests, its own interests, its belief and its current memory activation. This research moves away from the concept of a guide that recites facts about places or events towards a guide that utilises improvisational storytelling techniques. Contrasting views and personality are achieved with an inclusion of emotional memories containing the guides ideology and its past experiences.

Technology-enhanced role-play for social and emotional learning context – Intercultural empathy

Role-play can be a powerful educational tool, especially when dealing with social or ethical issues. However, while other types of educational activity have been routinely technology-enhanced for some time, the specific problem of supporting educational role-play with technology has only begun to be tackled recently. Within the eCIRCUS project we have designed a framework for technology-enhanced role-play with the aim of educating adolescents about intercultural empathy. This work was influenced by related fields such as intelligent virtual agents, interactive narrative and pervasive games. In this paper, we will describe the different components of our role-play technology by means of a prototype implementation of this technology, the ORIENT showcase. Furthermore we will present results of our evaluation of ORIENT.

Towards Intelligent Computer Assisted Educational Role-Play

This paper investigates how graphically displayed intelligent virtual actors, mobile devices and innovative interaction modalities can support and enhance educational role-play as well as deepen the sense of engagement and presence in participants to produce more successful learning. The discussion will be presented using a showcase from the eCIRCUS project, ORIENT, an application combining virtual and real life role-play for social and emotional learning.

AN EMERGENT EMOTION MODEL FOR AN AFFECTIVE MOBILE GUIDE WITH ATTITUDE

This article describes a novel emergent emotion model for a context-aware “Affective Mobile Guide with Attitude,” a guide with emotions and personality that accompanies visitors touring an outdoor attraction. The interest lies in modelling the conditions to the emergence of emotions instead of prescripting emotions. The emotion model regulates the guides emotions, behavior and beliefs, allowing the guide to adapt to its interaction environment flexibly. The guide adopts improvisational storytelling techniques taking into consideration the users interests, its own interests, and its current memory activation in narration. It has emotional memory that stores its previous experiences allowing it to express its perspectives while narrating the stories. The guides internal state is expressed through a 2-dimensional face where different facial features vary from one state to another along the arousal-pleasure emotional space. The guide exhibits potential in improving overall tour experience verified by a user evaluation.