Making Discourse Visible: Realizing Conversational Facial Displays in Interactive Agents

当人们交流时，他们系统地使用一套不同的非语言线索，并突出他们话语的意图解释。在面对面的交谈中，眉毛和头部的表情动作尤其普遍。本项目从人类交流和计算机动画的双重角度对这些面部对话信号进行研究，目的是在模拟面对面对话的口语对话界面中有效地实现它们。研究战略是对面部对话信号进行分类和记录，对它们的含义和解释进行建模，实现生成这些信号并使其具有动画效果的计算系统，并评估这些系统对用户理解主体的贡献。这一具体项目适合于一个更广泛的项目，该项目使用动画主体来增强界面的灵活性和可访问性，通过提高对话系统的健壮性，增加用户和计算机之间的通信带宽，并支持更多协作风格的交互。该项目的成果，包括新的软件、数据和培训材料，有望降低进入这一研究领域的门槛，并增加其势头。

When people communicate, they systematically employ a diverse set of nonverbal cues, and highlight the intended interpretation of their utterances. In face-to-face conversation, expressive movements of the brows and head are particularly pervasive. This project studies these facial conversational signals from the dual perspectives of human communication and computer animation, with the goal of realizing them effectively in spoken dialogue interfaces modeled on face-to-face conversation. The research strategy is to categorize and document facial conversational signals, to model their meaning and interpretation, to implement computational systems that generate and animate these signals, and to evaluate the contribution these systems can make to users' understanding of agents.This specific project fits into a broader program that uses animated agents to enhance the flexibility and accessibility of interfaces, by improving the robustness of dialogue systems, increasing communication bandwidth between users and computers, and supporting more collaborative styles of interaction. The results of this project, including new software, data and training materials, promise to lower the barriers to entry to this research area, and add to its momentum.