Adapting a Virtual Agent to Users' Vocabulary and Needs [PDF]

Abstract_ Duarte Digital is an agent that engages in inquiry-oriented conversations about an art artifact. Since it was build for a Museum, interactions are supposed to be directed to different types of audience: an interaction with an art expert should be carried out in a different way than an interaction with a child; likewise, interactions with users interested in learning should be distinct from interactions with users having only entertainment goals. As so, an agent needs to undergo two tasks: it must understand the user’s knowledge about the topic, and his/her learning goals; it should adapt its vocabulary and dialogue strategy to cope with the user’s characteristics and expectations. This paper presents a simple and straighforward model of interaction that allows a virtual agent to understand its interlocutors based on their vocabulary and to adapt to their expertise and needs.
Year_ 2009
Authors_ Ana Mendes, Rui Prada, Luisa Coheur
Booktitle_ IVA'2009 - 9th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
Volume_ 5773/2009
Pages_ 529-530
Series_ Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Publisher_ Springer Berlin / Heidelberg
Address_ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Month_ September

Bibtex_
@inproceedings { mendes09, abstract = {Duarte Digital is an agent that engages in inquiry-oriented conversations about an art artifact. Since it was build for a Museum, interactions are supposed to be directed to different types of audience: an interaction with an art expert should be carried out in a different way than an interaction with a child; likewise, interactions with users interested in learning should be distinct from interactions with users having only entertainment goals. As so, an agent needs to undergo two tasks: it must understand the user’s knowledge about the topic, and his/her learning goals; it should adapt its vocabulary and dialogue strategy to cope with the user’s characteristics and expectations. This paper presents a simple and straighforward model of interaction that allows a virtual agent to understand its interlocutors based on their vocabulary and to adapt to their expertise and needs.}, address = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands}, booktitle = {IVA'2009 - 9th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents}, month = {September}, pages = {529-530}, publisher = {Springer Berlin / Heidelberg}, series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science}, title = {Adapting a Virtual Agent to Users' Vocabulary and Needs}, volume = {5773/2009}, year = {2009}, author = {Ana Mendes and Rui Prada and Luisa Coheur} }