Title : Directeur.trice de Recherches
Address : 4 place Jussieu, CC 173, 75252 Paris cedex 05
Phone : +33 (0) 1 44 27 71 29
Email : pelachaud(at)isir.upmc.fr
Group : PIRoS (PIRoS)

Index:

• Read the project description.
• See the list of publications.
• Get in touch with us.

Project Description

 

"Seconds that matter: Managing First Impressions for a more Engaging Virtual Agent"

In any encounter the first moments are critical and the impressions that we form of others matter. The IMPRESSIONS project aims at creating computational models of communicative behavior for virtual Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) in order to manage first impressions when interacting with their users. Those models include the capability of generating and exhibiting verbal and nonverbal behaviors (e.g. smile, gaze, gestures) adapted to the user's behavior as well as physiological state. The behavior computational models include adaptive generation of behaviors for attaining and managing first impressions of warmth and competence. Whereas non-intrusive techniques advancing the state-of-the-art in physiological measurements are being used to detect/infer the user's physiological state during the first moments of interaction with the ECA. The project outcomes, in addition to those models, will include results from controlled user studies and a collaboration with the Natural History Museum of Neuchatel in Switzerland for a real-life public deployment.

 

 

The IMPRESSIONS project is funded by the ANR and it is a partnership between the CNRS-ISIR at the Uniersity Pierre and Marie Curie in France, and the Swiss Center for Affective Computing at the University of Geneva in Switzerland.

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List of Publications

 

• B. Biancardi, A. Cafaro, C. Pelachaud, "Could a Virtual Agent be Warm and Competent? Investigating User's Impressions of Agent's Non-Verbal Behaviours", Workshop "Investigating Social Interactions with Artificial Agents", Glasgow, November 2017.
• B. Biancardi, "Towards a Computational Model for First Impressions Management", Doctoral Consortium of 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, Glasgow, November 2017.
• B. Biancardi, A. Cafaro, C. Pelachaud, "Analyzing First Impressions of Warmth and Competence from Observable Nonverbal Cues in Expert-Novice Interactions", 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, Glasgow, November 2017.
• B. Biancardi, A. Cafaro, C. Pelachaud, "Investigating the role of gestures, arms rest poses and smiling in first impressions of competence.", at Virtual Social Interaction Workshop, Bielefeld, German, July 2017.
• B. Biancardi, A. Cafaro and C. Pelachaud "Gérer les premières impressions de compétence et de chaleur à travers des indices non verbaux.'', In Quatorzièmes Rencontres des Jeunes Chercheurs en Intelligence Artificielle (RJCIA 2017), July 2017, Caen, France.
• B. Biancardi, A. Cafaro, C. Pelachaud, "Investigating User's First Impressions of a Virtual Agent's Warmth and Competence Traits.'', in Workshop Affect, Compagnon Artificiel, Interaction (WACAI), June 2016

 

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Contacts

 

CNRS-ISIR, Pierre and Marie Curie University (coordinators):

• Beatrice Biancardi | Ph.D. student
• Angelo Cafaro | Postdoctoral researcher
• Catherine Pelachaud | Research director

University of Geneva

• Chen Wang | Ph.D. student
• Theodoros Kostoulas | Lecturer in Computing | Bournemouth University, UK
• Guillaume Chanel | Senior researcher and lecturer
• Thierry Pun | Full professor
• Phil Lopes | Postdoctoral researcher

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