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A Real-Time Architecture for Embodied Conversational Agents: Beyond Turn-Taking

Authors:
Bahador Nooraei
Charles Rich
Candace Sidner

Keywords: engagement; interruption; turn-taking; backchannel; barge-in; schema; BML; arbitration

Abstract:
We describe the design, implementation and use of a middleware system, called DiscoRT, to support the development of virtual and robotic conversational agents. The use cases for this system include handling conversational and event-based interruptions, and supporting engagement maintenance behaviors, such as turn-taking, backchanneling, directed gaze and face tracking. The multi-threaded architecture of the system includes both "hard" and "soft" real-time scheduling and integrates with an existing collaborative discourse manager, called Disco. We have used the system to build a substantial conversational agent that is about to undergo long-term field studies.

Pages: 381 to 388

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2014

Publication date: March 23, 2014

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4138

ISBN: 978-1-61208-325-4

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from March 23, 2014 to March 27, 2014