Intelligent Anthropomorphic Interface-Agent System in Networked Environment

新的人机界面风格正在追求超越当前的GUI（图形用户界面）。其中，多模态拟人界面是我们关注的重点，并已开展了相关研究。它是一种以人与人之间的面对面交流为隐喻的界面风格。在我们的研究中，我们特别强调了适合新兴的万维网信息环境的实用性。基于我们以前对具有真实移动面孔和语音通信能力的接口代理系统VSA（Visual Software Agent）的研究成果，我们将其连接到万维网浏览器（Netscape Navigator）。从而为包含海量信息的WWW信息空间实现了一种新的多模态界面风格。不仅作为一个接口，而且作为一个新的多模态信息内容形式，我们已经开发了一个原型VPA（Visual Page Agent），它嵌入在Web页面中，通过逼真的移动人脸图像和语音对话与用户进行交互，我们也对使用CG字符作为新的有吸引力的信息内容的多模态表示产生了兴趣，并开发了MPML（多模态演示标记语言），它允许许多人轻松地编写有吸引力的多模态演示。由于MPML与XML的一致性，它更适合于WWW上的分布。MPML及其相关工具已达到实用水平，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.