Page 288 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

ECA’s In E-Commerce Applications 271

2.3.2 Embodied Conversational Agents. A series of repeated mea-
sures 2 x 2 x 3 ANOVAs taking agent gender, agent type and application as
the within-subject independent variables were conducted to analyse partici-
pants’ attitudes to the questionnaire items relating to the embodied agents as
assistants. The questionnaire addressed key issues relating to the agents’ per-
sonality, trustworthiness and appearance.
All the agents were perceived as being equally friendly and competent. In
addition all four agents were perceived as being sociable, cheerful, and agree-
able. Participants were asked if the assistants were trustworthy. Although just
approaching significance (F =2.97,df =2.0,p < 0.06), the mean results did
show that the assistants in the bank scored less than the assistants in the other
applications (mean score: cinema = 5.15; travel = 5.23;bank= 4.93).
Results showed (Figure 33.2) significant preference for the formal agents
in the banking application, (p< 0.01). Significant results (Figure 33.3) also
showed participants felt it would be more appropriate for agents in the cinema
application to be dressed informally and agents in the banking application to
be dressed formally, (F =15.65,df =2.0,p < 0.01).

Figure 33.2. Attitude to Appearance Figure 33.3. Attitude to Appropriateness
of Assistants Dress
All participants in the experiment took part in a structured interview. Many
comments suggested ways to improve the system. Participants felt that the
agents’ gesturing was at times “a bit awkward”. This highlights one of the
challenge problems of creating autonomous animated embodied agents with
fluid movements. Research in on-going to address this issue. For instance
Badler [2] is using parallel transition networks as a mechanism to create real-
istic movement for animated agents.
Due to real-time technological restraints, some of the output responses were
delayed and participants found these delays off-putting and annoying, giving
the impression that the assistant seemed unsure. This highlights another chal-