Intelligent Anthropomorphic Interface-Agent System in Networked Environment

除了当前的图形用户界面(图形用户界面)之外，最近正在追求新的人机界面风格。其中，我们对多通道拟人化界面给予了关注并开展了研究。它是一种以人与人的面对面交流为隐喻的界面风格。在研究中特别强调了适应新兴WWW信息环境的实用性，并在前人研究的具有真实感动脸和语音通信能力的界面代理系统VSA(可视化软件代理)的基础上，将其接入WWW浏览器(Netscape Navigator)。为包含海量信息的WWW信息空间实现了一种新的多通道界面风格。不仅作为一种界面，而且作为一种新的多通道信息内容形式，我们开发了一个原型VPA(可视页面代理)，它嵌入在网页中，通过逼真的运动人脸图像和语音对话与用户交互，我们还对使用CG字符作为新的有吸引力的信息内容产生了兴趣，并开发了MPML(多通道呈现标记语言)，使许多人可以轻松地编写有吸引力的多通道演示文稿。由于MPML符合XML，因此非常适合在WWW上发布。MPML及其相关工具现在是实用级别的，并可作为公共软件使用。

New human interface styles are being pursued recently beyond current GUI (Graphical User Interface). Among them, we have paid our attention to multimodal anthropomorphic interface and have carried out our research. It is an interface style regarding human face-to-face communication as metaphor. In particular, we have emphasized the practical usefulness fitted to emerging WWW information environment in our research.Based on our previous research result on an interface agent system called VSA (Visual Software Agent) with a realistic moving face and voice communication capability, we have connected it to a WWW browser (Netscape Navigator). As a result, it has realized a new multimodal interface-style for the WWW information space containing huge information contents. Not only as an interface but also as a new multimodal information-content form, we have developed a prototype VPA (Visual Page Agent), which is embedded in a Web page and interacts with users through realistic moving facial images and speech dialogs.We got also having an interest in multimodal presentation using CG characters as new attractive information contents and have developed MPML (Mlutimodal Presentation Markup Language), which allows many people to write attractive multimodal presentations easily. As MPML is conformed to XML, it is fitted for the distribution in the WWW. MPML and its related tools are now practical level and available as public software.