Zhang, Li; Gillies, Marco; Dhaliwal, Kulwant; Gower, Amanda; Robertson, Dale and Crabtree, Barry. 2009. E-Drama: Facilitating Online Role-play using an AI Actor and Emotionally Expressive Characters. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 19(1), pp. 5-38. ISSN 1560-4292 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

This paper describes a multi-user role-playing environment, e-drama, which enables groups of people to converse online, in scenario driven virtual environments. The starting point of this research – edrama – is a 2D graphical environment in which users are represented by static cartoon figures. An application has been developed to enable integration of the existing edrama tool with several new components to support avatars with emotionally expressive behaviours, rendered in a 3D environment. The functionality includes the extraction of affect from open-ended improvisational text. The results of the affective analysis are then used to: (a) control an automated improvisational AI actor – EMMA (emotion, metaphor and affect) that operates a bit-part character in the improvisation; (b) drive the animations of avatars using the Demeanour framework in the user interface so that they react bodily in ways that are consistent with the affect that they are expressing. Finally, we describe user trials that demonstrate that the changes made improve the quality of social interaction and users’ sense of presence. Moreover, our system has the potential to evolve normal classroom education for young people with or without learning disabilities by providing 24/7 efficient personalised social skill, language and career training via role-play and offering automatic monitoring.

Item Type:	Article
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Computing
Dates:	Date Event 2009 Published
Item ID:	2289
Date Deposited:	29 Jul 2009 18:14
Last Modified:	29 Apr 2020 15:27
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/2289

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