SAMIR: A Smart 3D Assistant on the Web

A current trend in modern HCI is represented by Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs), even designed to run on the Web. They are virtual 3D human-like front ends coupled with software agents that are able to engage in a conversation with a user and execute complex tasks, such as, for example, searching for some specific information or ordering some items from the catalogue of an online shop. This paper presents SAMIR system, a framework to build intelligent agents for the Web. SAMIR consists of a 3D face which is animated to exploit expressions which are perceived by the user; a custom version of the ALICE chatterbot to chat with the user; and finally an XCS classifier system to deal with the problem of keeping conversation and face expressions coherent with each other. Experimental results, taken from an online bookstorebased scenario, are presented at the end.