TEACh: Task-Driven Embodied Agents That Chat

Papetto: Embodied Co-Presence in Video Chat

In this paper, we describe Papetto, a lightweight robotic arm that moves according to face detection techniques in order to mirror facial movements such as head shaking, leaning and tilting. Using this system we examine the role of the “frame” in video chat and how embodied co-presence is defined and bounded through lightweight robotic mirroring to enable new forms of engagement in remote commu...

Task-Oriented Collaboration with Embodied Agents in Virtual Worlds

Evaluating Data-Driven Style Transformation for Gesturing Embodied Agents

This paper presents an empirical evaluation of a method called Style transformation which consists of modifying an existing gesture sequence in order to obtain a new style where the transformation parameters have been extracted from an existing captured sequence. This data-driven method can be used either to enhance key-framed gesture animations or to taint captured motion sequences according t...

Building Neuromorphic Embodied Cell Assembly Agents that Learn

Neuromorphic embodied cell assembly agents that learn are one application being developed for the Human Brain Project (HBP). The HBP will build tools, available for all researchers, for building brain simulations. Existing simulated neural agents will be translated to the platforms provided by the HBP; these agents will then run on neuromorphic chips instead of a von Neumann based computer. The...

Can You Teach an Old Dog New Tricks? How Older Adults Perceive Embodied Agents

In this experiment we investigate how older adults perceive an embodied agent as compared to younger people in the context of an information giving task. Our results show that older adults found the agent less friendly and likeable than the younger participants in our experiment, and that they had a strong preference for a human presenter. However, the older adults were relatively positive on s...