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Engagement Perception and Generation for Social Robots and Virtual Agents

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Toward Robotic Socially Believable Behaving Systems - Volume I

Part of the book series: Intelligent Systems Reference Library ((ISRL,volume 105))

Abstract

Technology is the future , woven into every aspect of our lives, but how are we to interact with all this technology and what happens when problems arise? Artificial agents, such as virtual characters and social robots could offer a realistic solution to help facilitate interactions between humans and machines—if only these agents were better equipped and more informed to hold up their end of an interaction. People and machines can interact to do things together, but in order to get the most out of every interaction, the agent must to be able to make reasonable judgements regarding your intent and goals for the interaction. We explore the concept of engagement from the different perspectives of the human and the agent. More specifically, we study how the agent perceives the engagement state of the other interactant, and how it generates its own representation of engaging behaviour. In this chapter, we discuss the different stages and components of engagement that have been suggested in the literature from the applied perspective of a case study of engagement for social robotics, as well as in the context of another study that was focused on gaze-related engagement with virtual characters.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    NAO, http://www.aldebaran-robotics.com/.

  2. 2.

    Microsoft Kinect, http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/.

  3. 3.

    Affectiva Q Sensor, http://www.qsensortech.com/.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the European Commission (EC) and was funded by the EU FP7 ICT-317923 project EMOTE (EMbOdied-perceptive Tutors for Empathy-based learning) and the EU Horizon 2020 ICT-644204 project ProsocialLearn. The authors are solely responsible for the content of this publication. It does not represent the opinion of the EC, and the EC is not responsible for any use that might be made of data appearing therein.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Lee J. Corrigan & Ginevra Castellano

  2. Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden

    Christopher Peters

  3. Jacobs University Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Dennis Küster

  4. Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Ginevra Castellano

Authors
  1. Lee J. Corrigan
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  2. Christopher Peters
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  3. Dennis Küster
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  4. Ginevra Castellano
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lee J. Corrigan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Seconda Università di Napoli and IIASS, Caserta, Italy

    Anna Esposito

  2. Data Sci. Inst., Faculty of Sci. & Tech., Bournemouth University, Poole, United Kingdom

    Lakhmi C. Jain

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Corrigan, L.J., Peters, C., Küster, D., Castellano, G. (2016). Engagement Perception and Generation for Social Robots and Virtual Agents. In: Esposito, A., Jain, L. (eds) Toward Robotic Socially Believable Behaving Systems - Volume I . Intelligent Systems Reference Library, vol 105. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31056-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31056-5_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-31055-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31056-5

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