CS Forum: Hannes Högni Wilhjalmsson

Topic: "Building a Social Engine: Automating Social Cues for Avatars and Agents in Virtual Worlds"

Place: Odeion, TUAS-Building

Abstract:
In most social virtual worlds where users are represented by graphical avatars, such as in online games, the expression of communicative intent and social behavior relies on explicit user input such as by picking "wave" from a menu or inserting emoticons into chat text. This approach is fine for deliberate acts, but to portray continuous and relevant social presence through appropriate nonverbal behavior, it is impossible to rely on user micro-management of the avatar body. Instead we can automate spontaneous social cues such as gaze and posture to reveal the nature of their social situation.  Fully autonomous social agents in the environment also need to display these cues, which has lead us to the development of a common engine for delivering reactive social behavior for both human controlled avatars and AI controlled agents. In many ways, this development mirrors the development of physics engines that now frequently govern physical interaction in virtual worlds, except instead of implementing the laws of physics, we are implementing social norms and making them available to other builders of worlds.
 

Bio:
Dr. Hannes Hogni Vilhjalmsson is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Reykjavik University, director of the Center for Analysis and Design of Intelligent Agents (CADIA) and leader of its Socially Expressive Computing Group. He has been doing research in computational models of social and linguistic behavior for almost two decades at MIT, University of Southern California and now Reykjavik University. His focus has been on supporting fully embodied communication in virtual environments for entertainment, education and training. He was the technical director of the DARPA award winning Tactical Language and Culture Training project at the Center for Advanced Research into Technology for Education (CARTE) at USC and the leader of the Humanoid Agents in Social Game Environments national grant of excellence at Reykjavik University. In addition to academic work, he is a co-founder of the Los Angeles based company Alelo Inc., that builds serious games for language and culture learning, and is a co-founder of Reykjavik based MindGames ehf., the first company to release mind training games for the iPhone that incorporate consumer-level brainwave headsets. He holds a Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab.

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