Intelligent User Interface Agents

Artificial Liars: Why Computers Will (Necessarily) Deceive Us and Each Other

by Cristiano Castelfranchi

the final version published in Ethics and Information Technology,  2: 113-119, 2000, Kluwer, Dordrecht

In H-C interaction, computer supported cooperation and organisation, computer mediated commerce, intelligent data... more In H-C interaction, computer supported cooperation and organisation, computer mediated commerce, intelligent data bases, teams of robots. etc. there will be purposively deceiving computers. In particular, within the Agent-based paradigm we will have “deceiving agents”. Several kinds of deception will be present in interaction with the user, or among people via computer, or among artificial agents not only for malicious reasons (war, commerce, fraud, etc.) but also for goodwill and in our interest. Social control, trust, and moral aspects in artificial societies will be the focus of theoretical worm as well as of implementation. Is there any special affinity between AI and deception?

Open Sesame!: A look at personal assistants

by Michelle Hoyle

A negotiation model in agent-mediated electronic commerce

by Vasant Honavar

Modeling Human Behaviour in Emergency: A Research Agenda for the Creation of a Rescue Robot

by Nicla Rossini

co-autored with Anna Esposito.
In Apolloni, B., Bassis, S., Esposito, A., Morabito, C.F. (Eds): Neural Nets WIRN11, Vol. 234, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, pp. 235-46, ISBN 978-1-60750-971-4, IOSpress, 2011.
N.B.: THIS IS A PRE-PUBLICATION DRAFT. IT MAY CONTAIN ERROS AND DIFFER SIGNIFICANTLY FROM THE PUBLISHED VERSION. FOR QUOTATION PLEASE ASK US A COPY OF THE PUBLISHED VERSION.

Gesture variants and cognitive constraints for interactive virtual reality training systems

by Teenie Matlock

Autonomous Control System for Satellite Formation Flying

by Kary Thanapalan

Co-authored with Veres.S.,
Published in the IEE Digests on Autonomous agents in Control, 2005, pp 85 -91.

Recently there has been an increase of interest in the concept of satellite formation flying due to the efficiency... more Recently there has been an increase of interest in the concept of satellite formation flying due to the efficiency gains that can be obtained from using a large number of small crafts instead of one large one. In formation flying it is required that the satellites should fly in specified positions relative to the others and
with specified attitudes. For this specific motion pattern it is necessary to design control algorithms which are efficient and easy to implement on board. A cluster of satellites needs to operate autonomously to fulfil the control requirements of a mission without human intervention. An agent based control system is proposed to address the problem. The proposed software architecture allows each satellite to monitor the movements of the other satellites and to communicate and cooperate with others to maintain performance. The collaborative autonomous control system is able to reconfigure sensor and actuator functionality in face of degradation or malfunction. The control architecture is analysed for reliability and logical consistency

Agent Based Controller for Satellite Formation Flying

by Kary Thanapalan

Co-authored with Veres.S.,
Published In the proc. of 2nd Int. Conf .on Intelligent Sensor, Sensor Networks and Information Processing, IEEE-ISSNIP’05, Melbourne, Australia, 2005, pp385-390

In this paper an agent based control scheme for satellite
formation flying is discussed. The underlying idea of... more In this paper an agent based control scheme for satellite
formation flying is discussed. The underlying idea of our
design is to use a multi-agent architecture for satellite
formation flying control. The architecture is designed to
enable autonomous formation flying activities. The
performance requirements and algorithms are described.

Artificial Agents Entering Social Networks

by Nikolaos Mavridis

Published in book "The Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites", Routledge, New York, 2010, http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415801812/

Social network sites (SNSs), which have recently become tremendously popular, have so far been exclusively populated... more Social network sites (SNSs), which have recently become tremendously popular, have so far been exclusively populated by human actors. On the other hand, at least part of the functionality of such networks relies on software agents implementing artificial intelligence techniques—for example, in order to implement recommendation systems for friends or other entities. However, such agents were not playing actor roles within the network. Recently, the monopoly of human actors within SNSs has been broken; disembodied or even physically embodied intelligent software agents are just starting to populate SNSs. A huge range of potentialities exists regarding useful roles for such artificial agents, which might furthermore have varying degrees of autonomy. In this chapter, I will start by introducing a concrete example of such an agent: Sarah the FaceBot, a robotically embodied intelligent artificial agent, which carries out natural language interactions with people, physically present or remote, and which utilizes and publishes social information on Facebook—even having her own automatically updated page. Then, five areas of open questions that have arisen will be presented, as well as an exposition of the potentialities for other artificial agents in SNSs, either in actor or in other roles, which are promising to unleash new possibilities and beneficially transform social networks.

Informing Intelligent Environments: Creating Profiled User Interfaces

by Willem-Paul Brinkman

Fine, N., & Brinkman, W.-P. , "Informing Intelligent Environments: Creating Profiled User Interfaces", Adjunct Proceedings of EUSAI, pp. 15-17, 2004.

Designing user interfaces for broad user populations often means average user interfaces that do not take individual... more Designing user interfaces for broad user populations often means average user interfaces that do not take individual differences into consideration. The PROSKIN project is researching whether subsets of users can be identified and grouped by distinguishing interactive behaviours so that a more personally optimised interaction can be designed. This paper discusses the design and development of a research environment to support this research.

Automatic Text Classification of Consumer Health Web Sites Using WordNet

by Patrick Herron

Evaluating social & ubiquitous human-robot interaction

by Thomas Holz

Mauro Dragone, Thomas Holz Antonella Sassu and G.M.P. O'Hare, Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI 2010), Busan, Korea, 24th-27th November, 2010

While many robotic initiatives now share the thesis that robots are a compelling instance of those artefacts which... more While many robotic initiatives now share the thesis that robots are a compelling instance of those artefacts which comprise and deliver smart and ubiquitous environments, reconciling the social interface aspect with pervasiveness and ubiquity still remains a largely unexplored area of research. We argue that specific studies must be carried out to explore possible inconsistencies between the keystones of social human-robot interaction and the new features exhibited by ubiquitous robots. To this end, we conducted a pilot study to explore how the ubiquity of a robot’s sensing capabilities affects the unconscious human perception of the robot as a social partner. Specifically, the experiment investigates whether people prefer a robot exhibiting ubiquitous sensor access or a more traditional robot whose capabilities are confined to its on-board sensors. We report qualitative results from the experiment and how results from the pilot study affect the design of the full-scale experiment.

Using Mixed Reality Agents as Social Interfaces for Robots

by Thomas Holz

Dragone, M. and Holz, T. and O'Hare, G.M.P (2007) Using Mixed Reality Agents as Social Interfaces for Robots 16th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication 2007 (RO-MAN 2007) Jeju Island, Korea

Endowing robots with a social interface is often costly and difficult. Virtual characters on the other hand are... more Endowing robots with a social interface is often costly and difficult. Virtual characters on the other hand are comparatively cheap and well equipped but suffer from other difficulties, most notably their inability to interact with the physical world.  This paper details our wearable solution to combining physical robots and virtual characters into a Mixed Reality Agent (MiRA) through mixed reality visualisation.
It describes a pilot study demonstrating our system, and showing how such a technique can offer a viable alternative cost effective approach to enabling a rich social interface for Hu-man-Robot Interaction.

Mixed Reality Agents as Museum Guides

by Thomas Holz

Holz, T. and Dragone, M. and O'Hare, G.M.P. and Martin, A. and Duffy, B.R. (2006) Mixed Reality Agents as Museum Guides ABSHL '06: Agent-Based Systems for Human Learning, AAMAS 2006 Workshop Hakodate, Japan

This paper details a framework for mixed reality agents, i.e. agents that exist in both the real and virtual space.... more This paper details a framework for mixed reality agents, i.e. agents that exist in both the real and virtual space. These agents combine the physical presence of a robot with the adaptability and expressivity of a virtual character. The objective is to blur the traditional boundaries between the real and the virtual and provide a standardised methodology for intelligent agent control specifically designed for social interaction. We show how this architecture can be employed in the context of a mobile collaborative mixed reality environment that is cohabited by both robots and humans. As an example application we describe how the framework can be applied to a museum guide that takes advantage of the physical and virtual presence of the mixed reality agent to convey an individual and personalised learning experience. A mobile robot with associated virtual persona is the gateway to this mixed reality experience. The physical robot navigates the museum, while its virtual persona, which is unique and can be personalised for each observer, explains the exhibits and adapts its appearance to match the current context.

Where Robots and Virtual Agents Meet: A Survey of Social Interaction Research across Milgram's Reality-Virtuality Continuum

by Thomas Holz

Holz, T. and Dragone, M. and O'Hare, G.M.P. (2009) 'Where Robots and Virtual Agents Meet: A Survey of Social Interaction Research across Milgram's Reality-Virtuality Continuum'. International Journal of Social Robotics, 1 (1).

Traditionally, social interaction research has concentrated on either fully virtually embodied agents (e.g. embodied... more Traditionally, social interaction research has concentrated on either fully virtually embodied agents (e.g. embodied conversational agents) or fully physically embodied agents (e.g. robots). For some time, however, both areas have started augmenting their agents’ capabilities for social interaction using ubiquitous and intelligent environments.
We are placing different agent systems for social interaction along Milgram’s Reality-Virtuality Continuum—according to the degree they are embodied in a physical, virtual or mixed reality environment—and show systems that follow the next logical step in this progression, namely social interaction in the middle of Milgram’s continuum, that is, agents richly embodied in the physical and virtual world.
This paper surveys the field of social interaction research with embodied agents with a particular view towards their embodiment forms and highlights some of the advantages and issues associated with the very recent field of social interaction with mixed reality agents.

MiRA—Mixed Reality Agents

by Thomas Holz

Thomas Holz, Abraham G. Campbell, Gregory M.P. O’Hare, John W. Stafford, Alan Martin and Mauro Dragone, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Volume 69, Issue 4, April 2011, Pages 251-268

In recent years, an increasing number of Mixed Reality (MR) applications have been developed using agent technology —... more In recent years, an increasing number of Mixed Reality (MR) applications have been developed using agent technology — both for the underlying software and as an interface metaphor. However, no unifying field or theory currently exists that can act as a common frame of reference for these varied works. As a result, much duplication of research is evidenced in the literature. This paper seeks to fill this important gap by outlining “for the first time” a formal field of research that has hitherto gone unacknowledged, namely the field of Mixed Reality Agents (MiRAs), which are defined as agents embodied in a Mixed Reality environment.

Based on this definition, a taxonomy is offered that classifies MiRAs along three axes: agency, based on the weak and strong notions outlined by Wooldridge and Jennings (1995); corporeal presence, which describes the degree of virtual or physical representation (body) of a MiRA; and interactive capacity, which characterises its ability to sense and act on the virtual and physical environment.

Furthermore, this paper offers the first comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art of MiRA research and places each project within the proposed taxonomy. Finally, common trends and future directions for MiRA research are discussed.

By defining Mixed Reality Agents as a formal field, establishing a common taxonomy, and retrospectively placing existing MiRA projects within it, future researchers can effectively position their research within this landscape, thereby avoiding duplication and fostering reuse and interoperability.

An Intelligent Interface Agent for an Airline Company Web Portal

by Antonio Castro

Luís Barbosa, António J. M. Castro and Luís Paulo Reis, Proceedings of the 14th Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence (EPIA2009), pp. 181-192, ISBN: 978-972-96895-4-3, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal, October 12-15, 2009

In this paper we introduce an implementation of an Intelligent Interface Agent to support the use of a web portal in... more In this paper we introduce an implementation of an Intelligent Interface Agent to support the use of a web portal in an airline company. The interface agent architecture and data model is presented. We formalized concepts such as relevance and proximity regarding the data structure. The concepts of personal opinion and general opinion are also introduced and formalized. A statistical analysis was performed to obtain the best value when processing the general opinion. Some results of that analysis are presented and we conclude discussing our work and presenting future improvements.

Solving the Mapping Problem In User Interface Design by Seamless Integration In I DealXML

by Víctor López-Jaquero

Learning Together: ASIMO Developing an Interactive Learning Partnership with Children

by Victor Ng-Thow-Hing

Citation: Okita, S. Y., V. Ng-Thow-Hing, and R. Sarvadevabhatla, Learning together: ASIMO developing an interactive learning partnership with children, in the 18th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2009). pp. 1125-1130, 2009

Humanoid robots consist of biologically inspired features, human-like appearance, and intelligent behavior that... more Humanoid robots consist of biologically inspired features, human-like appearance, and intelligent behavior that naturally elicit social responses. Complex interactions are now possible, where children interact and learn from robots. A pilot study attempted to determine which features in robots led to changes in learning and behavior. Three common learning styles, lecture, cooperative, and self-directed, were implemented into ASIMO to see if children can learn from robots. General features such as monotone robot-like voice and human-like voice were compared. Thirty-seven children between the ages 4-to 10- years participated in the study. Each child engaged in a table-setting task with ASIMO that exhibited different learning styles and general features. Children answered questions in relation to a table-setting task with a learning measure. Promissory evidence shows that learning styles and general features matter especially for younger children.

Synchronized Gesture and Speech Production for Humanoid Robots

by Victor Ng-Thow-Hing

Citation: Ng-Thow-Hing, V., P. Luo, and S. Okita, Synchronized Gesture and Speech Production for Humanoid Robots, in 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2010), Taipei, Taiwan, pages 4617-4624, 2010.

We present a model that is capable of synchronizing expressive gestures with speech. The model, implemented on a Honda... more We present a model that is capable of synchronizing expressive gestures with speech. The model, implemented on a Honda humanoid robot, can generate a full range of gesture types, such as emblems, iconic and metaphoric gestures, deictic pointing and beat gestures. Arbitrary input text is analyzed with a part-of-speech tagger and a text-to-speech engine for timing information of spoken words. In addition, style tags can be optionally added to specify the level of excitement or topic changes. The text, combined with any tags, is then processed by several grammars, one for each gesture type to produce several candidate gestures for each word of the text. The model then selects probabilistically amongst the gesture types based on the desired degree of expressivity. Once a gesture type is selected, it coincides with a particular gesture template, consisting of trajectory curves that define the gesture. Speech timing patterns and style parameters are used to modulate the shape of the curve before it sent to the whole body control system on the robot. Evaluation of the model’s parameters were performed, demonstrating the ability of observers to differentiate varying levels of expressiveness, excitement and speech synchronization. Modification of gesture speed for trajectory tracking found that positive associations like happiness and excitement accompanied faster speeds, with negative associations like sadness or tiredness occurred at slower speeds.