last decade, intensive research on emotional intelligence has advanced
 significantly from its theoretical basis, analytical studies and processing
 technology to exploratory applications in a wide range of real-life domains.
 This paper brings new insights in the field of emotional, intelligent
 software agents. The first part is devoted to an overview of the
 state-of-the-art in emotional intelligence research with emphasis on
 emotional agents. A wide range of applications in different areas like
 modeling emotional agents, aspects of learning in emotional environments,
 interactive emotional systems and so on are presented. After that we suggest
 a systematic order of research steps with the idea of proposing an adequate
 framework for several possible real-life applications of emotional agents. We
 recognize that it is necessary to apply specific methods for dynamic data
 analysis in order to identify and discover new knowledge from available
 emotional information and data sets. The last part of the paper discusses
 research activities for designing an agent-based architecture, in which
 agents are capable of reasoning about and displaying some kind of emotions
 based on emotions detected in human speech, as well as online documents.
 [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. OI174023: Intelligent
 techniques and their integration into wide-spectrum decision support]

/pdf/emotional-agents-state-of-the-art-and-applications-2yrn4lnd6m.pdf

Emotional agents - state of the art and applications

Because of extensive use of different computer devices, human-computer interaction design nowadays moves towards creating user centric interfaces. It assumes incorporating different modalities that humans use in everyday communication. Virtual humans, who look and behave believably, fit perfectly in the concept of designing interfaces in more natural, effective, as well as social oriented way. In this paper we present a novel method for automatic speech driven facial gesturing for virtual humans capable of real time performance. Facial gestures included are various nods and head movements, blinks, eyebrow gestures and gaze. A mapping from speech to facial gestures is based on the prosodic information obtained from the speech signal. It is realized using a hybrid approach--Hidden Markov Models, rules and global statistics. Further, we test the method using an application prototype--a system for speech driven facial gesturing suitable for virtual presenters. Subjective evaluation of the system confirmed that the synthesized facial movements are consistent and time aligned with the underlying speech, and thus provide natural behavior of the whole face.

/pdf/on-creating-multimodal-virtual-humans-real-time-speech-2o9f4lcox8.pdf

On creating multimodal virtual humans--real time speech driven facial gesturing

Strategies of hiding information over communication media have long been an interest of CSCW and related communities. Most of the studies in this area have focused on various computational means of data protection and their vulnerabilities, and occasionally on social practices situated in the West. However, communities in the Global South often have a rich trove of vernacular arts and crafts of hiding information that might be leveraged to design novel kinds of privacy-preserving technologies. In this paper, we present findings from our three-month long original ethnographic work with various communities in Dhaka, Bangladesh that reveal a wide range of culturally embedded techniques of hiding confidential and sensitive information from their 'others'. Our analysis demonstrates the dynamic nature of these techniques, the learning process associated with them, and their deep relationship with contextual politics that these communities are embedded in. We further connect our findings to the broader interests of CSCW around otherness, ethics, and democracy, and also discuss their implications for design.

Of Ulti, 'hajano', and "Matachetar otanetak datam": Exploring Local Practices of Exchanging Confidential and Sensitive Information in Urban Bangladesh

Task-Based Language Teaching Vs. Traditional Way of English Language Teaching in Saudi Intermediate Schools: A Comparative Study

We introduce a universal architecture for statistically based HUman GEsturing (HUGE) system, for producing and using statistical models for facial gestures based on any kind of inducement. As inducement we consider any kind of signal that occurs in parallel to the production of gestures in human behaviour and that may have a statistical correlation with the occurrence of gestures, e.g. text that is spoken, audio signal of speech, bio signals etc. The correlation between the inducement signal and the gestures is used to first build the statistical model of gestures based on a training corpus consisting of sequences of gestures and corresponding inducement data sequences. In the runtime phase, the raw, previously unknown inducement data is used to trigger (induce) the real time gestures of the agent based on the previously constructed statistical model. We present the general architecture and implementation issues of our system, and further clarify it through two case studies. We believe that this universal architecture is useful for experimenting with various kinds of potential inducement signals and their features and exploring the correlation of such signals or features with the gesturing behaviour.

/pdf/huge-universal-architecture-for-statistically-based-human-3bgml17838.pdf

[HUGE]: universal architecture for statistically based HUman GEsturing

Facial displays are an extremely important communication channel fulfilling a wide variety of functions in discourse and conversation. Humans use them naturally, often subconsciously, and are therefore very sensitive to the application of such displays in their computer-generated correspondents, Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA). In this chapter, we aim to provide an extensive survey of one class of facial displays, the facial gestures. Facial gestures include various nods and head movements, blinks, eyebrow gestures and gaze, i.e., all facial displays except explicit verbal and emotional displays (visemes or expressions such as smile). Consciously or subconsciously, facial gestures play an important role both in discourse and in conversation. They are instrumental in turn taking, emphasizing, providing rhythm, and can be connected to physiological functions. While verbal and emotional displays may be regarded as the explicit, perhaps even obvious, the facial gestures are less tangible - yet they are largely responsible for what we intuitively call natural behavior of the face. In other words, an ECA pronouncing a sentence using perfect coarticulation mechanism for the lips and displaying a carefully modeled expression of surprise will still look unnatural if the facial gestures are not right as well. It is therefore extremely important for an ECA to implement facial gestures well. While there is a large body of knowledge on this topic both from psychology and ECA literature, it is quite scattered. Existing ECA implementations typically concentrate on some aspects of facial gestures but do not cover the complete set. We attempt to provide a complete survey of facial gestures that can be useful as a guideline for their implementation in an ECA. Specifically, we provide a systematically organized repertoire of usual facial gestures. For each gesture class, we provide the information on its typical usage in discourse and conversation, conscious or subconscious causes, any available knowledge on

/pdf/facial-gestures-taxonomy-and-application-of-nonverbal-34o3ei4som.pdf

Facial Gestures: Taxonomy and Application of Nonverbal, Nonemotional Facial Displays for Embodied Conversational Agents

We present two methods for automatic facial gesturing of graphically embodied animated agents. In one case, conversational agent is driven by speech in automatic Lip Sync process. By analyzing speech input, lip movements are determined from the speech signal. Another method provides virtual speaker capable of reading plain English text and rendering it in a form of speech accompanied by the appropriate facial gestures. Proposed statistical model for generating virtual speaker's facial gestures, can be also applied as addition to lip synchronization process in order to obtain speech driven facial gesturing. In this case statistical model will be triggered with the input speech prosody instead of lexical analysis of the input text.

/pdf/automatic-facial-gesturing-for-conversational-agents-and-56i8m11n5x.pdf

Karlo Smid

Papers

Facial Gestures: Taxonomy and Application of Nonverbal, Nonemotional Facial Displays for Embodied Conversational Agents

Automatic facial gesturing for conversational agents and avatars