As real-time characters become almost
commonplace, the next challenge is to make them interact with humans through the
modalities that we share among real people, especially language, gesture, and shared perceptions of the world. This course explored several ways to give real-time, animated, embodied characters more intelligence and communication skills so they can act, react, make decisions, and take initiatives. It also addressed how these skills can be applied in collaborative groups, interactive training,
and smarter games.
Prerequisites
Experience with graphics, and/or particular application areas. Some experience with
graphical modeling and animating human-like figures recommended but not essential.
Topics
Actions required for animated agents (faces, arms, legs, and eyes), knowledge and action representation, common sense and logical reasoning, agent architectures, learning,
smart conversations, agents for pedagogical interaction, managing multi-agent interactions, and language and gesture as control modalities.
Organizers
Norman Badler
University of Pennsylvania
John Funge
Sony Computer Entertainment America
Lecturers
Norman Badler
University of Pennsylvania
Bruce Blumberg
Justine Cassell
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
John Funge
Sony Computer Entertainment America
Jeff Rickel
University of Southern California
