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Published Articles >> Table of Contents >> Abstract
Third International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 1 (AAMAS'04)
pp. 194-201
Caring for Agents and Agents that Care: Building Empathic Relations with Synthetic Agents
Ana Paiva, Instituto Superior Técnico and INESC-ID
João Dias, Instituto Superior Técnico and INESC-ID
Daniel Sobral, Instituto Superior Técnico and INESC-ID
Ruth Aylett, University of Salford
Polly Sobreperez, University of Salford
Sarah Woods, University of Hertfordshire
Carsten Zoll, University of Bamberg
Lynne Hall, University of Sunderland
Full Article Text:
 
DOI Bookmark: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/AAMAS.2004.10047
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| Abstract |
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When building agents and synthetic characters, and in
order to achieve believability, we must consider the emotional
relations established between users and characters,
that is, we must consider the issue of "empathy". Defined
in broad terms as "An observer reacting emotionally because
he perceives that another is experiencing or about
to experience an emotion", empathy is an important element
to consider in the creation of relations between humans
and agents. In this paper we will focus on the role
of empathy in the construction of synthetic characters, providing
some requirements for such construction and illustrating
the presented concepts with a specific system called
FearNot!. FearNot! was developed to address the difficult
and often devastating problem of bullying in schools. By using
role playing and empathic synthetic characters in a 3D
environment, FearNot! allows children from 8 to 12 to experience
a virtual scenario where they can witness (in a
third-person perspective) bullying situations. To build empathy
into FearNot! we have considered the following components:
agent’s architecture; the characters’ embodiment
and emotional expression; proximity with the user and emotionally
charged situations.We will describe how these were
implemented in FearNot! and report on the preliminary results
we have with it.
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 Additional Information
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Citation:
Ana Paiva, João Dias, Daniel Sobral, Ruth Aylett, Polly Sobreperez, Sarah Woods, Carsten Zoll, Lynne Hall,
"Caring for Agents and Agents that Care: Building Empathic Relations with Synthetic Agents,"
aamas,
pp. 194-201,
Third International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 1 (AAMAS'04),
2004
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