I-Corps: Social Gaze for Software Agents and Robots

这项提议进一步开发了一个软件包，它可以在虚拟助手或社交机器人中自动产生头部和眼睛的运动，并与实时语音同步，进行“类人类”对话。现有的解决方案使用预先编程的头部和眼睛运动进行对话，因为目前的技术无法同步头部和眼睛的凝视以实现实时语音。所提出的技术可以用于交互式开放式对话，并且可以适应对话伙伴的性别和文化。该项目为人机交互和人机交互提供了三个方面的贡献。首先，在虚拟助手或社交机器人中自主生成头部和眼睛凝视，并与开放式互动对话的实时语音同步。其次，负责手势生成的社交代理的前端完全独立于后端知识库；因此，虚拟助手或社交机器人解决方案的部署更容易、更便宜、更快。第三，这项技术能够产生对性别和文化敏感的社会凝视。该项目的更广泛影响包括该技术对最终用户的验证好处，例如提高了社会接受度、增加了积极情绪、增加了参与度、改善了可理解性和卓越的亲和力。由于鼓励与最终用户进行初始讨论，建议的技术可能会在视频游戏、在线营销、网络客户服务、网真、远程医疗、娱乐、老年人护理和医疗保健等大量市场中产生变革。成功部署该技术可能会为部署虚拟助理或社交机器人解决方案的组织节省大量成本，并因加快消费者采用而增加这些解决方案的供应商的收入。

This proposal further develops a software package that autonomously generates head and eye movements, in a virtual assistant or social robot synchronized with real-time speech for "human-like" conversation. Existing solutions use preprogrammed head and eye movements for conversation, as current technology cannot synchronize head and eye gaze for real-time speech. The proposed technology can be used in interactive open-ended conversations and can adapt to gender and culture of the conversation partner. This project presents three contributions to human-computer and human-robot interaction. First, autonomous generation of head and eye gaze in a virtual assistant or social robot synchronized with real-time speech for open-ended interactive conversations. Second, the front end of the social agent responsible for gesture generation is completely independent of the back end knowledge base; hence deployments of virtual assistant or social robot solutions are easier, cheaper, and faster. Third, the technology enables generation of social gaze sensitive to gender and culture. The broader impact of the project include the validated benefits of the technology for end users, such as increased social acceptance, increased positive feelings, increased engagement, improved understandability, and superior likeability. Stemming from encouraging initial discussions with end users the proposed technology may be transformative in a large number of markets like video games, online marketing, web customer service, telepresence, telemedicine, entertainment, eldercare, and healthcare.A successful deployment of the technology may result in substantial cost savings to organizations that deploy virtual assistant or social robot solutions, and increased revenues for the vendors of these solutions due to accelerated consumer adoption.