A Touching Agent : Integrating Touch in Social Interactions between Human and Embodied Conversational Agent in an Immersive Environment

Fabien Boucaud (1) , Indira Thouvenin (1) , Catherine Pelachaud (2, 3)

1 Heudiasyc - Heuristique et Diagnostic des Systèmes Complexes [Compiègne]
2 ISIR - Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique
3 PIROS - Perception, Interaction, Robotique sociales

Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) are endowed with more and more social and emotional capabilities. They can build rapport with humans by expressing thoughts and emotions through verbal and non-verbal behaviors. However, ECAs often lack the sense of touch, which is an important communicative and emotional capability, in particular in the context of an immersive environment. The sense of touch has been shown to be essential to the social development and general well-being of human beings, from their infancy to adulthood. It is thought to be a facilitator in the establishment of relationships and it is overall considered a very important medium of communication, especially for the communication of emotions. In many languages being touched designates not only physical contact but also being moved by something, feeling something on an emotional level. While in adulthood touch is usually kept for the closest relationships, it is nonetheless present in our daily lives (in greetings for example). We therefore believe that adding touch to the social capabilities of artificial agents would contribute to their ability to build rapport and emotional connections with humans. But to which extent would granting an ECA the ability to touch and be touched enhance its ability to communicate emotions and to build and maintain a social and emotional relationship with a human? To investigate this interrogation, our work focuses on the development of a touching agent: touching in the physical sense as well as the emotional sense. In the context of an immersive environment, our autonomous virtual ECA should be able to perceive and interpret touch, as well as decide how and when to perform it based on the overall interaction and emotional state of its human partner. Our first results are so far promising as to the credibility of such a touching agent.

Mots clés: Human-agent interaction; Embodied conversational agent; Emotion; Virtual Reality VR; Social Touch; Haptic Interaction; Decision Model

Domaines: Synthèse d'image et réalité virtuelle [cs.GR]; Interface homme-machine [cs.HC]; Intelligence artificielle [cs.AI]

Fabien Boucaud, Indira Thouvenin, Catherine Pelachaud. A Touching Agent : Integrating Touch in Social Interactions between Human and Embodied Conversational Agent in an Immersive Environment. 3rd International Association for the Study of Affective Touch Congress (IASAT 2019), Sep 2019, Linköping, Sweden. ⟨hal-02359879⟩