Abstract
In military training simulations there is an increasing need for synthetic agents as team members that are capable of replacing human role players. Human-agent interaction using spoken natural language is an important capability for such agents, especially when communication skills are part of training. Interaction technologies such as speech-to-text, text-to-speech, natural language understanding and dialogue management are maturing, though their use in human-in-the-loop simulations is scarce. In this paper we address design challenges for building conversational agents in the domain of military training. In this domain, agents often have to adhere to specific communication standards, protocols and use of jargon. We propose a data-driven design method to tailor conversational agents to a particular application domain, while minimizing human authoring. We demonstrate this method within an existing military training simulation capability and show that agents are able to effectively build shared situational awareness and coordinated their activities in a shared task environment.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
DialogFlow was only used for intent classification, as its features for dialogue management are now handled by the system’s dialogue manager.
References
Dompke, U.: Computer Generated Forces - Background, Definition and Basic Technologies. TNO, The Hague (2003)
Hancock, P., Vincenzi, D., Wise, J., Mouloua, M.: Human Factors in Simulation and Training. CRC Press (2008)
Ball, J., et al.: The synthetic teammate project. Comput. Math. Organ. Theory 16(3), 271–299 (2010)
Andersson, J., Svensson, J.: Speech acts, communication problems, and fighter pilot team performance. Ergonomics 49(12–13), 1226–1237 (2006)
Noyes, J.M., Haas, E.: Military applications: human factors aspects of speech-based systems. In: Chen, F., Jokinen, K. (eds.) Speech Technology, pp. 251–270. Springer, New York (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-73819-2_13
Jokinen, K.: Spoken language dialogue models. In: Chen, F., Jokinen, K. (eds.) Speech Technology: Theory and Applications, pp. 33–60. Springer, New York (2010) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-73819-2_3
Harms, J.G., Kucherbaev, P., Bozzon, A., Houben, G.J.: Approaches for dialog management in conversational agents. IEEE Internet Comput. 23, 13–22 (2019)
Perez-Martin, D., Pascual-Nieto, I.: Conversational Agents and Natural Language Interaction: Techniques and Effective Practices, Information Science Reference - Imprint of. IGI Publishing (2011)
Kerry, A., Ellis, R., Bull, S.: Conversational agents in E-Learning. In: Allen, T., Ellis, R., Petridis, M. (eds.) Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems XVI, pp. 169–182. Springer, London (2009) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-215-3_13
Klopfenstein, L., Delpriori, S., Malatini, S, Bogliolo, A.: The rise of bots: a survey of conversational interfaces, patterns, and paradigms. In: Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (2017)
Gatt, A., Krahmer, E.: Survey of the state of the art in natural language generation: core tasks, applications and evaluations. J. Artif. Intell. Res. 61, 65–170 (2018)
Graesser, A.C., Wiemer-Hastings, K., Wiemer-Hastings, P., Kreuz, R.: AutoTutor: a simulation of a human tutor. Cogn. Syst. Res. 1(1), 35–51 (1999)
Talbot, T.R.A.: Virtual human standardized patients. In: Rizzo, A., Bouchard, S. (eds.) Virtual Reality for Psychological and Neurocognitive Interventions, pp. 387–405. Springer, New York (2019) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9482-3_17
Hart, J., Gratch, J., Marsella, S.: How virtual reality training can win friends and influence people. In: Human Factors in Defence, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 235-249. Ashgate, Farnham (2013)
van Oijen, J., van Doesburg, W., Dignum, F.: Goal-based communication using BDI agents as virtual humans in training: an ontology driven dialogue system. In: Dignum, F. (ed.) AGS 2010. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 6525, pp. 38–52. Springer, Heidelberg (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-18181-8_3
Graesser, A.C., Li, H., Forsyth, C.: Learning by communicating in natural language with conversational agents. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 23(5), 374–380 (2014)
Traum, D., Rickel, J.: Embodied agents for multi-party dialogue in immersive virtual worlds. In: Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems: Part 2 (2002)
Kenny, P., et al.: Building interactive virtual humans for training environments. In: Proceedings of the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) (2007)
Chen, H., Liu, X., Yin, D., Tang, J.: A survey on dialogue systems: recent advances and new frontiers. ACM SIGKDD Explor. Newsl 19(2), 25–35 (2017)
Grice, H.: Logic and conversation. In: Studies in Syntax and Semantics III: Speech Acts, pp. 41--58 (1975)
Traum, D., Swartout, W., Gratch, J., Marsella, S.: A virtual human dialogue model for non-team interaction. In: Dybkjær, L., Minker, W. (eds.) Recent Trends in Discourse and Dialogue. Text, Speech and Language Technology, vol. 39. Springer, Dordrecht (2008) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6821-8_3
AFTTP 3–1: Operational Brevity Words, Definitions, and Counter Air Communication Standards (2001)
Hadzic, M., Wongthongtham, P., Dillon, T., Chang, E.: Ontology-Based Multi-Agent System. Springer, New York (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01904-3
Braun, D., Hernandez, M., Matthes, F., Langen, M.: Evaluating natural language understanding services for conversational question answering systems. In: Proceedings of the 18th Annual {SIG}dial Meeting on Discourse and Dialogue, Saarbrücken (2017)
Walker, M., et al.: DARPA communicator dialog travel planning systems. In: 7th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology, Aalborg, Denmark (2001)
Möller, S.: Assessment and evaluation of speech-based interactive systems: from manual annotation to automatic usability evaluation. In: Speech Technology: Theory and Applications, Boston, MA, pp. 301–322S (2010
Affolter, K., Stockinger, K., Bernstein, A.: A comparative survey of recent natural language interfaces for databases. VLDB J. 28(5), 793–819 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00778-019-00567-8
Han, Y.J., Park, S.B., Park, S.Y.: A natural language interface concordant with a knowledge base. Comput. Intell. Neurosci. 2016, 1–15 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/9174683
Amershi, S., et al.: Guidelines for human-AI interaction. In: Proceedings of the 2019 HCI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Glasgow (2019)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
van Oijen, J., Claessen, O. (2021). Building Conversational Agents for Military Training: Towards a Virtual Wingman. In: Degen, H., Ntoa, S. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in HCI. HCII 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12797. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77772-2_34
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77772-2_34
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-77771-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-77772-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)