Article

Interacting with embodied agents that can see: how vision-enabled agents can assist in spatial tasks

Authors:

Johann Schrammel,

Manfred TscheligiAuthors Info & Claims

NordiCHI '06: Proceedings of the 4th Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction: changing roles

Pages 135 - 144

https://doi.org/10.1145/1182475.1182490

Published: 14 October 2006 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper, we describe user experiences with a system equipped with cognitive vision that interacts with the user in the context of personal assistance in the office. A cognitive vision computer can see the user and user responses and react to situations that happen in the environment, crossing the boundary between the virtual and the physical world. How should such a seeing computer interact with its users? Three different interface styles -- a traditional GUI, a cartoon-like embodied agent and a realistic embodied agent -- are tested in two tasks where users are actively observed by a (simulated) cognitive vision system. The system assists them in problem solving. Both the non-embodied and the embodied interaction styles offer the user certain advantages and the pros and cons based on the experiment results are discussed in terms of performance, intelligence, trust, comfort, and social presence.

References

[1]

Andre, E., Rist, T., and Muller, J., 1998. Integrating Reactive and Scripted Behaviors in a Life-Like Presentation Agent, Proc. 2nd International Conference on Autonomous Agents (Agents '98), 261--268

Digital Library

[2]

G. Ball and J. Breese, 2000. Emotion and personality in a conversational agent. In J. Cassell, J. Sullivan, S. Prevost, and E. Churchill, Eds., Embodied conversational agents, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 189--219.

Digital Library

[3]

Bickmore, T. W., 2003. Relational Agents: Effecting Change through Human-Computer Relationships, Ph.D. Thesis, MIT.

[4]

Bickmore, T. W. and Picard, R. W., 2005, Establishing and Maintaining Long-Term Human-Computer Relationships, ACM Transactions, 12 (2), 293--327.

Digital Library

[5]

Brennan, S. E. and Ohaeri, J. O., 1994. Effects of Message Style on Users' Attributions toward Agents, Conference Companion Proc. CHI '94, 281--282.

Digital Library

[6]

Cole, R., Vuuren, S. v., Pellom, B., Hacioglu, K., Ma, J., Movellan, J., Schwartz, S., Wadestein, D., Ward, W. and Yan, J., 2003. Perceptive Animated Interfaces: First Steps Toward a New Paradigm for Human--Computer Interaction, Proc. IEEE, 91(9), 1391--1405.

[7]

Cassell, J., 2001. Embodied Conversational Agents, AI Magazine, 22(4), 67--84.

Digital Library

[8]

Dahlbäck, N., Jänsson, A. and Ahrenberg, L., 1993. Wizard of Oz Studies - Why and How, Proc. ACM International Workshop on Intelligent User Interfaces '93, 193--200.

Digital Library

[9]

ECVision, online at http://www.ecvision.org. Last accessed: January 2006.

[10]

Furnham, A., 1997. The psychology of behaviour at work, Psychology Press, Publishers, East Sussex, UK.

[11]

de Greef, H. P. and IJsselsteijn, W. A., 2000. Social Presence in the PhotoShare Tele-Application. Proc. PRESENCE 2000, Delft, The Netherlands

[12]

Keirsey Online Temperament Sorter (German), http://www.keirsey.com/ Last accessed: January 2006.

[13]

King, W. J., and Ohya, J., 1995. The representation of agents: a study of phenomena in virtual environments, Proc. RO-MAN'95.

[14]

Koda, T. and Maes, P., 1996. Agents with Faces: The Effects of Personification of Agents, Proc. HCI '96 UK, 98--103.

[15]

Lanier, J., 1995. Agents of alienation, ACM Interactions, 2 (3), 66--72.

Digital Library

[16]

Lee, K. M. and Nass, C., 2003. Designing Social Presence of Social Actors in Human Computer Interaction, Proc. CHI '03, 289--296.

Digital Library

[17]

Lester, J. C., Converse, S. A., Kahler, S. E., Barlow, S. T., Stone, B. A. & Bhogal, R. S., 1997. The Persona Effect: Affective Impact of Animated Pedagogical Agents, Proc. CHI '97, 359--366.

Digital Library

[18]

Mori, M., 1970. The Uncanny Valley. Energy, 7, 33--35.

[19]

Mori, M., 2005. On the Uncanny Valley. Proc. workshop Humanoids-2005.

[20]

Nass, C., Steuer, J. and Tauber, E. R., 1994. Computers are Social Actors, Proc. CHI '94, 72--78.

Digital Library

[21]

Picard, R. W., 1997. Affective Computing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Digital Library

[22]

Power, G., Wills, G. and Hall, W., 2002. User Perception of Anthropomorphic Characters with Varying Levels of Interaction. Proc. HCI '02 UK, 37--51.

[23]

Reeves, B. and Nass, C., 1996. The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Digital Library

[24]

Sas, C., Hare, G. M. P. O., and Reilly, R., 2004. Presence and task performance: an approach in the light of cognitive style, Cognition, Technology & Work, 6 (1), 53--56.

Digital Library

[25]

Short, J. A., Williams, E., & Christie, B., 1976. The social psychology of telecommunications, New York: John Wiley & Sons.

[26]

Sproull, L., Walker, J., Subramani, R., Kiesler, S., and Waters, K., 1996. When the Interface is a Face, Human Computer Interaction, 11, 97--124.

Digital Library

[27]

Vernon, D., 2004. Cognitive Vision -- The Development of a Discipline, Proc. IST 2004 Event 'Participate in your future'.

[28]

Xiao, J., Catrambone, R. and Stasko, J., 2003. Be Quiet? Evaluating Proactive and Reactive User Interface Assistants, Proc. INTERACT 2003, 383--390.

Cited By

Nickel KMeyer C(2025)Why Female Virtual Conversational Agents Exhibit Greater Social Presence: Insights From the Stereotype Content ModelJournal of Consumer Behaviour10.1002/cb.2475Online publication date: 10-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.2475
Niwa MMasai KYoshida SSugimoto MWard JMcGill MMarky K(2023)Investigating Effects of Facial Self-Similarity Levels on the Impression of Virtual Agents in Serious/Non-Serious ContextsProceedings of the Augmented Humans International Conference 202310.1145/3582700.3582721(221-230)Online publication date: 12-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3582700.3582721
Matsui TKoike A(2021)Who Is to Blame? The Appearance of Virtual Agents and the Attribution of Perceived ResponsibilitySensors10.3390/s2108264621:8(2646)Online publication date: 9-Apr-2021
https://doi.org/10.3390/s21082646
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Interacting with embodied agents that can see: how vision-enabled agents can assist in spatial tasks
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

Recommendations

Enabling Embodied Conversational Agents to Respond to Nonverbal Behavior of the Communication Partner
Human-Computer Interaction. User Experience and Behavior
Abstract
Humans communicate on three levels: words, paralanguage, and nonverbal. While conversational agents focus mainly on the interpretation of words that are being spoken, recently the focus has also shifted to how we say those words with our tone, ...
Multi-Modal Embodied Agents Scripting
ICMI '02: Proceedings of the 4th IEEE International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces

Embodied agents present ongoing challenging agenda for research in multi-modal user interfaces and human-computer-interaction. Such agent metaphors will only be widely applicable to online applications when there is a standardised way to map underlying ...
Modeling situation-dependent nonverbal expressions for a pair of embodied agent in a dialogue based on conversations in TV programs
HCI'13: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Human-Computer Interaction: interaction modalities and techniques - Volume Part IV

Mathematical model for controlling nonverbal expressions of a pair of embodied agents designed for presenting various information through their dialogue is discussed. Nonverbal expressions of a human during conversation with others depend on those of ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

NordiCHI '06: Proceedings of the 4th Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction: changing roles

October 2006

517 pages

ISBN:1595933255

DOI:10.1145/1182475

Editors:
Anders Mørch
University of Oslo, Norway
,
Konrad Morgan
University of Bergen, Norway
,
Tone Bratteteig
University of Oslo, Norway
,
Gautam Ghosh
Userminded, Norway
,
Dag Svanaes
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

Copyright © 2006 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 14 October 2006

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Conference

NORDICHI06

NORDICHI06: The 4th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

October 14 - 18, 2006

Oslo, Norway

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 379 of 1,572 submissions, 24%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

14
Total Citations
View Citations
500
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)10
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 05 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Nickel KMeyer C(2025)Why Female Virtual Conversational Agents Exhibit Greater Social Presence: Insights From the Stereotype Content ModelJournal of Consumer Behaviour10.1002/cb.2475Online publication date: 10-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.2475
Niwa MMasai KYoshida SSugimoto MWard JMcGill MMarky K(2023)Investigating Effects of Facial Self-Similarity Levels on the Impression of Virtual Agents in Serious/Non-Serious ContextsProceedings of the Augmented Humans International Conference 202310.1145/3582700.3582721(221-230)Online publication date: 12-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3582700.3582721
Matsui TKoike A(2021)Who Is to Blame? The Appearance of Virtual Agents and the Attribution of Perceived ResponsibilitySensors10.3390/s2108264621:8(2646)Online publication date: 9-Apr-2021
https://doi.org/10.3390/s21082646
Miyamoto TKatagami DShigemitsu YUsami MTanaka TKanamori HYoshihara YFujikake K(2021)Influence of Social Distance Expressed by Driving Support Agent’s Utterance on Psychological AcceptabilityFrontiers in Psychology10.3389/fpsyg.2021.52694212Online publication date: 24-Feb-2021
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.526942
Wang IBuchweitz LSmith JBornholdt LGrund JRuiz JKorn O(2020)Wow, You Are Terrible at This!Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents10.1145/3383652.3423887(1-8)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3383652.3423887
Reinhardt JHillen LWolf Kvan den Hoven ELoke LShaer Ovan Dijk JKun A(2020)Embedding Conversational Agents into ARProceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3374920.3374956(299-310)Online publication date: 9-Feb-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3374920.3374956
Rheu MShin JPeng WHuh-Yoo J(2020)Systematic Review: Trust-Building Factors and Implications for Conversational Agent DesignInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2020.180771037:1(81-96)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2020.1807710
Wang ISmith JRuiz JBrewster SFitzpatrick GCox AKostakos V(2019)Exploring Virtual Agents for Augmented RealityProceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290605.3300511(1-12)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3290605.3300511
Matsui TYamada S(2017)Design of a Product Recommendation Virtual Agent That Induces User’s Trust Operating User’s TrustTransactions of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence10.1527/tjsai.C-G9232:2(C-G92_1-10)Online publication date: 2017
https://doi.org/10.1527/tjsai.C-G92
Matsui TYamada SWrede BNagai YKomatsu THanheide MNatale L(2017)Two-Dimensional Mind Perception Model of Humanoid Virtual AgentProceedings of the 5th International Conference on Human Agent Interaction10.1145/3125739.3125761(311-316)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3125739.3125761
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten