Life-Like Characters. Tools, Affective Functions, and Applications (original) (raw)

Galatea: Open-Source Software for Developing Anthropomorphic Spoken Dialog Agents

Cognitive Technologies, 2004

Galatea is a software toolkit to develop a human-like spoken dialog agent. In order to easily integrate the modules of different characteristics including speech recognizer, speech synthesizer, facial animation synthesizer[ facial-image synthesizer ] and dialog controller, each module is modeled as a virtual machine having a simple common interface and connected to each other through a broker (communication manager). Galatea employs model-based speech and facial animation[ facial-image ] synthesizers whose model parameters are adapted easily to those for an existing person if his/her training data is given. The software toolkit that runs on both UNIX/Linux and Windows operating systems will be publicly available in the middle of 2003 [1, 2].

Open-source software for developing anthropomorphic spoken dialog agent

2002

An architecture for highly-interactive human-like spoken-dialog agent is discussed in this paper. In order to easily integrate the modules of different characteristics including speech recognizer, speech synthesizer, facial-image synthesizer and dialog controller, each module is modeled as a virtual machine that has a simple common interface and is connected to each other through a broker (communication manager). The agent system under development is supported by the IPA and it will be publicly available as a software toolkit this year.

Open-source Software for Developing Anthropomorphic Spoken Dialog Agents

2003

An architecture for highly-interactive human-like spoken-dialog agent is discussed in this paper. In order to easily integrate the modules of different characteristics including speech recognizer, speech synthesizer, facial-image synthesizer and dialog controller, each module is modeled as a virtual machine that has a simple common interface and is connected to each other through a broker (communication manager). The agent system under development is supported by the IPA and it will be publicly available as a software toolkit this year.

Development of a Toolkit for Spoken Dialog Systems with an Anthropomorphic Agent: Galatea

Proceedings Apsipa Asc 2009 Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association 2009 Annual Summit and Conference, 2009

The Interactive Speech Technology Consortium (ISTC) has been developing a toolkit called Galatea that comprises four fundamental modules for speech recognition, speech synthesis, face synthesis, and dialog control, that can be used to realize an interface for spoken dialog systems with an anthropomorphic agent. This paper describes the development of the Galatea toolkit and the functions of each module; in addition, it discusses the standardization of the description of multi-modal interactions.

A NATURAL CONVERSATIONAL VIRTUAL HUMAN WITH MULTIMODAL DIALOG SYSTEM

The making of virtual human character to be realistic and credible in real time automated dialog animation system is necessary. This kind of animation carries importance elements for many applications such as games , virtual agents and movie animations. It is also considered important for applications which require interaction between human and computer. However, for this purpose, it is compulsory that the machine should have sufficient intelligence for recognizing and synthesizing human voices. As one of the most vital interaction method between human and machine, speech has recently received significant attention, especially in avatar research innovation. One of the challenges is to create precise lip movements of the avatar and synchronize it with a recorded audio. This paper specifically introduces the innovative concept of multimodal dialog systems of the virtual character and focuses the output part of such systems. More specifically, its focus is on behavior planning and developing the data control languages (DCL).

Prototype of animated agent for application

2002

Executive summary This Document describes the Prototype of animated agent for application 1. In particular, it describes the different phases involved in the computation of the final animation of the agents. This document discusses the method we are using to resolve conflicts arising when combining several facial expressions. We also present our lip and coarticulation model.

The OLGA project: An animated talking agent in a dialogue system

1997

The object of the Olga project is to develop an interactive 3D animated talking agent. The final target could be the future, digital TV-set, where the Olga agent would guide naive users through various new services on the networks. The current application is consumer information about microwave ovens. Olga implicates the development of a system with components from many different fields: dialogue management, speech recognition, multimodal speech synthesis, graphics, animation, facilities for direct manipulation and database handling. To integrate all knowledge sources Olga is implemented with separate modules communicating with a central dialogue interaction manager. In this paper we mainly describe the talking animated agent and the dialogue manager. There is also a short description of the preliminary speech recogniser used in the project.

Lifelike talking faces for interactive services

Proceedings of the IEEE, 2003

Lifelike talking faces for interactive services are an exciting new modality for man-machine interactions. Recent developments in speech synthesis and computer animation enable the real-time synthesis of faces that look and behave like real people, opening opportunities to make interactions with computers more like face-to-face conversations. This paper focuses on the technologies for creating lifelike talking heads, illustrating the two main approaches: model-based animations and sample-based animations. The traditional model-based approach uses three-dimensional wire-frame models, which can be animated from high-level parameters such as muscle actions, lip postures, and facial expressions.

Socially communicative characters for interactive applications

2006

ABSTRACT Interactive Face Animation-Comprehensive Environment (iFACE) is a general-purpose software framework that encapsulates the functionality of “face multimedia object” for a variety of interactive applications such as games and online services. iFACE exposes programming interfaces and provides authoring and scripting tools to design a face object, define its behaviours, and animate it through static or interactive situations.