Toward a Unified Scripting Language: Lessons Learned from Developing CML and AML

Arafa, Yasmine; Kamyab, Kaveh; Mamdani, E. H.

doi:10.1007/978-3-662-08373-4_3

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Joining the valuable discussion emerged in the research field of Embodied Character Agents about the standardization of scripting languages (see for example [16], [12]), we decided to focus our efforts on the modeling of multichannel virtual characters, inspiring our approach to the generality and simplicity guidelines that support the standard language for multimodal presentations, SMIL 1 .…”

Section: Figure 1 Parallel View Of Multimodal Interfaces and Synthetmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The idea of explicitly modeling synthetic characters as the synergic contribution of separate communicative channels acts as the basis for many agent scripting languages described in the literature (e.g., CML, AML [1], MPML [14]). In fact, apart from languages that aim at a fine-grain modeling of discourse facets, with script centered around the verbal message (e.g., APML [5]), most existing languages do consider at least a distinction between the audio and visual modality, or a tripartite distinction between voice, face and body channels, with final synchronization of the separate performance contributions via <seq> or <par> statements that define the sequential or parallel integration.…”

Section: Characters As Multichannel Interfacesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is therefore important for the scripting language to be sufficiently high-level and independent from specific communication contexts. In some existing languages, instead, the scripts may also contain information about the state of the external dialogue (MPML [13], VHML [8]), or information about what caused an emotion to be displayed by the agent (CML [1]), or the alternation of performance actions by different agents (MPML [13]). However, this information requires that the script interpreter and the character(s) used for the presentation specifically support the processing of this "external" data.…”

Section: Independence From Communication Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Synthetic characters as multichannel interfaces

Not¹,

Balci²,

Pianesi³

et al. 2005

Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces

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Synthetic characters are an effective modality to convey messages to the user, provide visual feedback about the system internal understanding of the communication, and engage the user in the dialogue through emotional involvement. In this paper we argue for a fine-grain distinction of the expressive capabilities of synthetic agents: avatars should not be considered as an indivisible modality but as the synergic contribution of different communication channels that, properly synchronized, generate an overall communication performance. In this view, we propose SMIL-AGENT as a representation and scripting language for synthetic characters, which abstracts away from the specific implementation and context of use of the character. SMIL-AGENT has been defined starting from SMIL 0.1 standard specification and aims at providing a high-level standardized language for presentations by different synthetic agents within diverse communication and application contexts.

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Section: Figure 1 Parallel View Of Multimodal Interfaces and Synthetmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Characters As Multichannel Interfacesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Independence From Communication Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Synthetic characters as multichannel interfaces

Not¹,

Balci²,

Pianesi³

et al. 2005

Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces

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show abstract

“…The Character Markup Language (CML) contains both low-level and medium-level tags to define the gesture behavior of a character as well as high-level tags that define combinations of other tagging structures [3]. Furthermore, CML allows one to define high-level attributes to modulate a character's behavior according to its emotional state and personality.…”

Section: Authoring Life-like Charactersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introducing the Cast for Social Computing: Life-Like Characters

Prendinger

Ishizuka

2004

Cognitive Technologies

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Summary. Life-like characters are one of the most exciting technologies for humancomputer interface applications. They convincingly take the roles of virtual presenters, synthetic actors and sales personas, teammates and tutors. A common characteristic underlying their believability or life-likeness as conversational partners is computational models that provide them with affective functions such as synthetic emotions and personalities, and implement human interactive behavior or presentation skills. In social computing, a paradigm that aims to support the tendency of humans to interact with computers as social actors, life-like characters are key. They may embody the interface between humans and computers, and thus improve the otherwise poor communicative capabilities of computational devices.The success of life-like character applications today relies relies on the careful crafting of their designers, mostly programmers. The wide dissemination of life-like character technology in interactive systems, however, will greatly depend on the availability of tools that facilitate scripting of intelligent life-like behavior. The core tasks include the synchronization of synthetic speech and gestures, the expression of emotion and personality by means of body movement and facial display, the coordination of the embodied conversational behavior of multiple characters possibly including the user, and the design of artificial minds for synthetic characters.In this chapter we will first describe what life-like characters are, and how they differ from related synthetic entities. We will then explain how life-like character technologies may change and improve the interaction between humans and computers. Next, we report on some of the most promising character scripting and representation languages as well as authoring tools currently available. After that, the most successful life-like character systems are briefly introduced, demonstrating the wide range of applications where embodied agents are at work. Some final remarks on this highly active research field conclude this introductory chapter. Helmut Prendinger and Mitsuru Ishizuka

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“…The VHML (Virtual Human Markup Language) [4] and the CML (Character Markup Language) [1] are both scripting and representation languages for animation. The APML (Affective Presentation Markup Language) [2] targets communicative functions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%