View - ResearchGate

EgoChat Agent 97virtualized-ego(A)virtualized-ego(B)liquorbrandyliquorsakebeerwineFigure 11.3.Example of a flow-of-topics setStory structure: A stream of messages reflects social relationships betweencommunity members. The frequency of exchange between communitymembers on mailing-lists and between a user and a VE on EgoChatis recorded in each VE. For example, when community member (a) isinclined to talk with member (b) more than with community member (c)and the VE of member (b) has talked in the previous turn, the VE ofmember (a), not that of member (c), goes first in the present turn.Coherence: A VE that selects the following message after a message mentionedjust before goes first so that messages are exchanged coherently.The summaries in a personal memory are labeled with key words thatrepresent the contents of the summaries. A message is regarded as theone that follows the previous message when its keyword matches theprevious one.Fairness: A VE that speaks little goes before one that speaks a lot for the sakeof fairness.4. ExperimentWe carried out a basic experiment to ascertain the usability of the EgoChatsystem and investigate the effects of voice interaction between humans andagents. The experimental system was implemented in Java and Java3D API ona MS-Windows OS. The voices of VEs were not generated by text-to-speechsoftware. Instead, they were recorded human voices. The body of a VE consistsof a spherical head and a cone-shaped torso, and the head nods while talking.4.1 MethodWe created four VEs and generated their personal memories from a humanlysummarized log of a mailing list about liquor where participants exchangedideas about how to market brandy. Each VE represents a mailing-list participant.The subjects were three postgraduate students in our laboratory who have