Scripting Affective Communication with Life-Like Characters in Web-Based Interaction Systems

In this paper, we discuss scripting tools that aim at facilitating the design of web-based interactions with animated characters capable of affective communication. Specifically, two systems are developed. The SCREAM system is a scripting tool that enables authors to create emotionally and socially appropriate responses of animated characters. Content authors may design the mental make-up of a character by declaring a variety of parameters and behaviors relevant to affective communication and obtain quantified emotional reactions that can be input to an Animation Engine. While the default operations of a character’s ‘mind’ are based on psychological and sociological research, authors may easily modify and extend its rule set. In order to facilitate high-level scripting and connectivity with other web-based animated agent systems, the tool is written in a lightweight Java based Prolog system and Java. Connectivity is demonstrated by interfacing SCREAM with the our second system, MPML, an XML-style markup language that allows to control and coordinate the multi-modal appearance of synthetic characters. Affective communication with animated characters is illustrated by the implementation of a web-based casino scenario. Submitted to: Applied Artificial Intelligence Journal Statement: The authors certify that this work has not been published elsewhere and that it has not been submitted simultaneously for publication elsewhere. Abbreviated title: “Scripting Affective Communication with Life-like Characters” or if too long, “Scripting Affective Communication”