Adapting a Virtual Agent to Users’ Vocabulary and Needs

Introduction

Duarte Digital is an agent that engages in inquiry-oriented conversations about an art artifact. Since it was build for a Museum, interactions are supposed to be directed to different types of audience: an interaction with an art expert should be carried out in a different way than an interaction with a child; likewise, interactions with users interested in learning should be distinct from interactions with users having only entertainment goals. Being so, an agent needs to undergo two tasks: it must understand the user’s knowledge about the topic, and his/her learning goals; it should adapt its vocabulary and dialogue strategy to cope with the user’s characteristics and expectations.

This paper presents a simple and straighforward model of interaction that allows a virtual agent to understand its interlocutors based on their vocabulary and to adapt to their expertise and needs.