Page 23 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

6 Socially Intelligent Agents

the agent to develop an identity which is intimately suited to interaction with
that particular human. This, according to the author may be the only way to
achieve the quality of relationship needed. In order to understand such a pro-
cess, the author draws upon current ideas of the human self and its ontogenetic
formation. He articulates a model of the construction of a self by an agent, in
interaction with users.
In chapter 5, Katherine Isbister discusses the use of nonverbal social cues
in social relationships. Spatial proximity, orientation and posture can commu-
nicate social intention and relationship, such as agreement or independence
among agents. Facial expressions and hand, head and body gestures can indi-
cate attitude and emotional response such as approval or uncertainty. Spatial
pointing and eye gaze can be used to indicate subjects of discussion. Timing,
rhythm and emphasis contribute to prosody and the management of conversa-
tional interaction. Her practical work concerns the development of interface
agents whose purpose is to facilitate human-human social interaction. She re-
ports on her experience in two projects, a helper agent and a tour guide agent.

2.2 Agents and Emotions/Personality

Emotion is key in human social activity, and the use of computers and robots
is no exception. Agents that can recognize a user’s emotions, display meaning-
ful emotional expressions, and behave in ways that are perceived as coherent,
intentional, responsive, and socially/emotionally appropriate, can make impor-
tant contributions towards achieving human-computer interaction that is more
‘natural’, believable, and enjoyable to the human partner. Endowing social ar-
tifacts with aspects of personality and emotions is relevant in a wide range of
practical contexts, in particular when (human) trust and sympathetic evaluation
are needed, as in education, therapy, decision making, or decision support, to
name only a few.
Believability, understandability, and the problem of realism are major issues
addressed in the first three chapters of this section, all of them concerned with
different aspects of how to design (social) artifacts’ emotional displays and
behavior in a way that is adapted to, and recognizable by humans. The fourth
chapter addresses the converse problem: how to build agents that are able to
recognize human emotions, in this case from vocal cues.
In chapter 6, Eva Hudlicka presents the ABAIS adaptive user interface sys-
tem, capable of recognizing and adapting to the user’s affective and belief
states. Based on an adaptive methodology designed to compensate for per-
formance biases caused by users’ affective states and active beliefs, ABAIS
provides a generic framework for exploring a variety of user affect assessment
methods and GUI adaptation strategies. The particular application discussed
in this chapter is a prototype implemented and demonstrated in the context of