Page 160 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

Pedagogical Soap 143

2. IPD Background

In our basic design for interactive pedagogical drama, there are five main
components: a cast of autonomous character agents, the 2D or 3D puppets
which are the physical manifestations of those agents, a director agent, a cine-
matographer agent, and finally the learner/user who impacts the behavior of the
characters. Animated agents in the drama choose their actions autonomously
following directions from the learner and/or a director agent. Director and
cinematographer agents manage the interactive drama’s onscreen action and
its presentation, respectively, so as to maintain story structure, achieve ped-
agogical goals, and present the dynamic story so as to achieve best dramatic
effect. The design of all these agents requires both general capabilities as well
as knowledge specific to the interactive drama that is being created.
Our current approach to the design of IPDs is to start with a professionally
written script and systematically deconstruct it. The deconstruction serves sev-
eral ends. It provides a model of the story and how variability can enter that
story. In particular, the deconstruction provides the knowledge to dynamically
direct the agents in the drama. It also guides the modeling of the improvisa-
tional agents in the drama, their personalities, their goals, their dialog, as well
as how they interact to achieve their goals. Finally, it serves to constrain the
complexity of these models. Detailed discussion of this script deconstruction
approach and the overall IPD architecture is beyond the scope of this chapter
but more details can be found in [8].

2.1 Carmen’s Bright IDEAS

The story for Carmen’s Bright IDEAS is organized into three acts. The first
act reveals the back story. The second, main, act takes place in Gina’s of-
fice. Carmen discusses her problems with Gina, who suggests she use Bright
IDEAS to help her find solutions. See Figure 17.1. With Gina’s help, Car-
men goes through the initial steps of Bright IDEAS, applying the steps to one
of her problems and then completes the remaining steps on her own. The fi-
nal act reveals the outcomes of Carmen’s application of Bright IDEAS to her
problems.
The human mother interacts with the drama by making choices for Carmen
such as what problem to work on, what Carmen’s inner thoughts are at critical
junctures, etc. The mother’s selection of inner thoughts for Carmen impacts her
emotional state, which in turn impacts her thoughts and behavior. It is Gina’s
task to keep the social problem solving on track by effectively responding to
Carmen’s state, and motivating her through dialog. Meanwhile, a bodiless cin-
ematographer agent is dynamically manipulating the camera views, flashbacks,
and flash-forwards.