This paper introduces a new application area for agents in the computer interface: the support of human-human interaction. We discuss an interface agent prototype that is designed to support human-human communication in virtual environments. The prototype interacts with users strategically during conversation, spending most of its time listening. The prototype mimics a party host, trying to find a safe common topic for guests whose conversation has lagged. We performed an experimental evaluation of the prototype's ability to assist in cross-cultural conversations. We designed the prototype to introduce safe or unsafe topics to conversation pairs, through a series of questions and suggestions. The agent made positive contributions to participants' experience of the conversation, influenced their perception of each other and of each others' national group, and even seemed to effect their style of behavior. We discuss the implications of our research for the design of social agents to support human- human interaction.

In this study, we investigated people's relationships with AIBO, a robotic pet, through 6,438 spontaneous postings in online AIBO discussion forums. Results showed that AIBO psychologically engaged this group of participants, particularly by drawing forth conceptions of technological essences (75%), life-like essences (49%), mental states (60%), and social rapport (59%). However, participants seldom attributed moral standing to AIBO (e.g., that AIBO deserves respect, has rights, or can be held morally accountable for action). Our discussion focuses on how robotic pets (now and in the future) may (a) challenge traditional boundaries (e.g. between who or what can possess feelings), (b) extend our conceptions of self, companionship, and community, and (c) begin to replace interactions with live pets. We also discuss a concern that people in general, and children in particular, may fall prey to accepting robotic pets without the moral responsibilities (and moral developmental outcomes) that real, reciprocal companionship and cooperation involves. This research contributes to a growing literature on the human-robotic relationship.

This paper discusses hosting activities. Hosting activities are a general class of collaborative activity in which an agent provides guidance in the form of information, entertainment, education or other services in the user’s environment (which may be an artificial or the natural world) and may also request that the human user undertake actions to support the fulfillment of those services. This paper reports on experience in building a robot agent for hosting activities, both the architecture and applications being used. The paper then turns to a range of issues to be addressed in creating hosting agents, especially robotic ones. The issues include the tasks and capabilities needed for hosting agents, and social relations, especially human trust of agent hosts. Lastly the paper proposes a new evaluation metric for hosting agents.

This study examines the roles of gender and visual realism in the persuasiveness of speakers. Participants were presented with a persuasive passage delivered by a male or female person, virtual human, or virtual character. They were then assessed on attitude change and their ratings of the argument, message, and speaker. The results indicated that the virtual speakers were as effective at changing attitudes as real people. Male participants were more persuaded when the speaker was female than when the speaker was male, whereas female participants were more persuaded when the speaker was male than when the speaker was female. Cross gender interactions occurred across all conditions, suggesting that some of the gender stereotypes that occur with people may carry over to interaction with virtual characters. Ratings of the perceptions of the speaker were more favorable for virtual speakers than for human speakers. We discuss the application of these findings in the design of persuasive human computer interfaces.

Although the motivational benefits of Embodied Conversational Agents in other areas have been demonstrated their potential for relationship building within e-tailing has been little utilized. In this exploratory paper we consider customer perceptions of what types of ECA are appropriate to retailing websites using data from semi-structured interviews with 30 Internet shoppers. Extrapolating the findings from the advertising literature concerning match-up between endorser and brand, product or retailer we find this will be an important element in the acceptability and viability of ECAs on retail websites. It is apparent that great care has to be taken in matching not only the physical characteristics of the ECA to perceptions of the brand, product or retailer but also to the goals and motivations of potential customers of a website. We also find that introducing customer interaction into the ‘match-up ’ mix introduces a new level of complexity, that of matching customer expectations. It is this level of service that may be most difficult for technology and organizations to meet.

We sought to create a social embodied conversational agent to support group interactions, using `balance theory' from social science research on human-human relations. We conducted an experiment to evaluate the social ECA's effectiveness in a group situation, depending upon how strongly it mediated the conversation among group members. First, we confirmed that it could win favorable feelings from subjects by showing an agreeing attitude to them and, conversely, unfavorable feelings by showing a disagreeing attitude. Next, we validated balance theory as a rule governing both agent-human relations and human relations if the social ECA highly mediated the conversation. We found that the social ECA's effectiveness was very low if it did not control turn-taking, and if the human pair had a chance to converse extensively with one another. Conversation analysis corroborated these results.

Abstract. Rapid increases in agent technology as well as the movement of computing into more and more social transactions has increased the need for embodied interface agents. However, interaction designers currently lack sufficient guidelines to confidently and successfully design the visual form of these agents. In this paper we offer a summary of research on the visual form of agents. In addition, we present our own study that explores the relationships between an agents visual form, the task it performs, and the demographics of users. As a result of the review and our own study, we frame the task of design of an agent’s form as being similar to “casting”. Finally, we offer some design guidelines to aid interaction designers in selecting human and non-human forms, in deciding how to address stereotypes, and in looking for opportunities to recast the agent’s visual form. 1

© The Author(s) 2009. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Robots exhibit life-like behavior by performing intelligent actions. To enhance human-robot interaction it is necessary to investigate and understand how end-users perceive such animate behavior. In this paper, we report an experiment to investigate how people perceived different designs of robot embodiments in terms of animacy and intelligence. iCat and Robovie II were used as the two embodiments in this experiment. We conducted a between-subject experiment where robot type was the independent variable, and perceived animacy and intelligence of the robot were the dependent variables. Our findings suggest that a robot’s perceived intelligence is significantly correlated with animacy. The correlation between the intelligence and the animacy of a robot was observed to be stronger in the case of the iCat embodiment. Our results also indicate that the more animated the face of the robot, the more likely it is to attract the attention of a user. We also discuss the possible and probable explanations of the results obtained.

© The Author(s) 2008. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract This study emphasizes the need for standardized measurement tools for human robot interaction (HRI). If we are to make progress in this field then we must be able to compare the results from different studies. A literature review has been performed on the measurements of five key concepts in HRI: anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, perceived intelligence, and perceived safety. The results have been distilled into five consistent questionnaires using semantic differential scales. We report reliability and validity indicators based on several empirical studies that used these questionnaires. It is our hope that these questionnaires can be used by robot developers to monitor their progress. Psychologists are invited to further develop the questionnaires by adding new concepts, and to conduct further validations where it appears necessary.

The current study examined how assessments of copresence in an immersive virtual environment are influenced by variations in how much an embodied agent resembles a human being in appearance and behavior. We measured the extent to which virtual representations were both perceived and treated as if they were human via self-report, behavioral, and cognitive dependent measures. Distinctive patterns of findings emerged with respect to the behavior and appearance of embodied agents depending on the definition and operationalization of copresence. Independent and interactive effects for appearance and behavior were found suggesting that assessing the impact of behavioral realism on copresence without taking into account the appearance of the embodied agent (and vice versa) can lead to misleading conclusions. Consistent with the results of previous research, copresence was lowest when there was a large mismatch between the appearance and behavioral realism of an embodied agent.