Mini Symposium

The progamme is as follows:

13:00 - 15:30     Mini-symposium            (ZI 4126, University of Twente):

13:00   Blended Interaction - Blending real and computer-based Interaction

Prof. dr. H. Reiterer, Human-Computer Interaction

Department of Computer & Information Science

University of Konstanz, DE

14:00   Gesture-driven interaction by artists

Dr. Zsofia Ruttkay

Head of Creative Technology Lab

Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design

Budapest, HU

14:30   Requirements & Building Blocks for (Truly) Conversational Agents

Dr.-Ing. Stefan Kopp

Sociable Agents Group, CITEC Cognitive Interaction Technology

Bielefeld University, DE

16:30 - 16:45     Short introduction (lekenpraatje: WA4, University of Twente)

16:45 - 18:00     Defence ceremony         (WA4, University of Twente)

Abstracts of the talks follow below. You are all cordially invited.

Paul van der Vet.

ABSTRACTS

Blended Interaction - Blending real and computer-based Interaction Prof. dr. H. Reiterer http://hci.uni-konstanz.de/index.php?a=staff&b=Reiterer&c=contact

The talk will present our vision of a new interaction paradigm of the human-comuter interaction.  We believe that each new interaction paradigm should addresses our bodily and social skills carefully. This follows from recent findings in cognitive science and psychology, which lead to an embodied view of cognition. Reality-based Interaction is a first step in this direction, because the goal is to make computer interaction more like interaction with the real, non-digital word. The idea is to blend the digital and real word interaction. The vision of ubiquitous computing also perfect fits with our approach. Implicit in this vision is the assumption that physical interaction between humans and computers will be more like the way humans interact with the physical world (e.g. speak, gesture, write, touch & grasp physical artefacts). An open question is the right design approach for a Reality-based Interaction paradigm: What part of the user interface should be based on reality-based interaction and what part should be provide computer-only functionality that is not realistic? Conceptual Blending based on the work of Fauconnier & Turner and Imaz & Benyon could be a helpful way to find the right answer to this question. We call Reality-based Interaction & Embodied Interaction "Blended Interaction" because it conceptual integrates or blends interaction skills & objects from the real world with virtual means of the digital world in a holistic manner (personnel, social and physical context). We have developed a variety of showcases as proof of concepts (e.g. Blended Library, Blended Museum, Blended Interaction Design Room). From a technical point of view it was necessary for us to develop two frameworks (Zoomable Object-oriented Information Landscape Framework; Library for multimodal Interaction) that make the realization of our vision feasible.

Gesture-driven interaction by artists

Dr. Zsofia Ruttkay

http://create.mome.hu/

Gesture-based interaction, in the broadest sense, is appealing for playful, artistic and social interaction. But how do artists use the possibilities, especially that usually they do not have fancy hardware at their disposal, and often they also lack advanced programming skills? In my talk I will show examples of gesture-based works by staff and students of the newly-formed Creative Technology Lab, and illustrate how low-cost hw is put together, e.g. for infra-red sensing. Also I will discuss the open-source environments, and particularly, the features of the Processing language and its libraries used for such interactive applications. Finally, I will compare some of my experiences of teaching at an art university and UT, especially that both institutes share a similar objective of preparing students for creative applications of IT.

Requirements & Building Blocks for (Truly) Conversational Agents Dr.-Ing.Stefan Kopp http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/~skopp/

Computer systems increasingly figure in humanoid form, either as robots or as 3D virtual characters, and thus allow the possibility for users to meet and interact with a machine as if having a face-to-face conversation with another human. Since the first ECA systems were pioneered about 15 years ago, we have seen a rapid development fed by technological progress in processing power, speech recognition, speech synthesis, computer vision, graphics, and animation. ECAs nowadays look nicer, move smoother, and sound more natural. What has advanced relatively slower are the underlying models of multimodal dialogue, verbal or non-verbal behavior, and the dynamic mutual adaptations and coordinations that interaction partners engage on a range of different time scales (from very short to long term). In this vein, I will discuss phenomena that characterize human-human conversation and that imply requirements for artificial conversational agents. One key assumption is that ECAs can readily become capable of meeting some of them as we work towards systems in which bottom-up processes of social resonance and understanding others coalesce with top-down processes of producing intentional communicative behavior. Work will be presented that aims to address some of these requirements by targeting (i) social behavior generation and perception; (ii) fluent continuous feedback; (iii) and social learning of communicative behavior.