Scrutinizing natural scenes: controlling the gaze of an embodied conversational agent

Antoine Picot (1) , Gérard Bailly (2) , Frédéric Elisei (3) , Stephan Raidt (2)

1 GIPSA-SA-IGA - GIPSA - Signal et Automatique pour le Diagnostic et la Surveillance
2 GIPSA-MPACIF - GIPSA - Machines Parlantes, Agents Communicants & Interaction Face-à-face
3 GIPSA-Services - GIPSA-Services

We present here a system for controlling the eye gaze of a virtual embodied conversational agent able to perceive the physical environment in which it interacts. This system is inspired by known components of human visual attention system and reproduces its limitations in terms of visual acuity, sensitivity to movement, limitations of short-memory and object pursuit. The aim of this coupling between animation and visual scene analysis is to provide sense of presence and mutual attention to human interlocutors. After a brief introduction to this research project and a focused state of the art, we detail the components of our system and confront simulation results to eye gaze data collected from viewers observing the same natural scenes.

Domaines: Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]

Antoine Picot, Gérard Bailly, Frédéric Elisei, Stephan Raidt. Scrutinizing natural scenes: controlling the gaze of an embodied conversational agent. IVA 2007 - 7th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, Sep 2007, Paris, France. pp.50-61. ⟨hal-00170337⟩