May I guide you? – Context-Aware Embodied Cooperative Systems in Virtual Environments

How can awareness and memory of goals and executed actions improve the behavior and assistance of virtual humanoid agents in collaborative exploration of information-enriched virtual environments? To provide an answer the project's setting involves placing such an embodied system together with a human in a virtual environment and let them reach a goal in cooperation. The system, which takes the role of an assisting partner, should be able to e.g.

• keep track of the human's and its own movements and actions
• recommend actions and directions
• answer questions about past events and locations

Steps to achieve the goal of a context-aware virtual assistant with a goal and action memory are

• design of dynamic memory data structures and symbolic representations of events and visited places in a spatially arranged knowledge resource
• development of cognitive mechanisms for a basic sensing of the human’s intentions to provide situated guidance in exploring knowledge resources
• adaptation of the cooperative agent's natural language interface to fit the special needs of understanding the human’s vague requests

This project will contribute to a gain in cognitive interaction technology by approaching systems that have context-awareness and remember goal histories and executed actions. The envisioned virtual assistant is expected to positively influence the human’s trust, by acting naturally and supporting the human by sharing his/her intentions.

Project team: Felix Rabe, Ipke Wachsmuth