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Reactive virtual agent learning for NUI-based HRI applications

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Abstract

The natural user interface (NUI) has been investigated in a variety of fields in application software. This paper proposes an approach to generate virtual agents that can support users for NUI-based applications through human–robot interaction (HRI) learning in a virtual environment. Conventional human–robot interaction (HRI) learning is carried out by repeating processes that are time-consuming, complicated and dangerous because of certain features of robots. Therefore, a method is needed to train virtual agents that interact with virtual humans imitating human movements in a virtual environment. Then the result of this virtual agent can be applied to NUI-based interactive applications after the interaction learning is completed. The proposed method was applied to a model of a typical house in virtual environment with virtual human performing daily-life activities such as washing, eating, and watching TV. The results show that the virtual agent can predict a human’s intent, identify actions that are helpful to the human, and can provide services 16 % faster than a virtual agent trained using traditional Q-learning.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the MSIP (Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support program (NIPA-2014-H0301-14-1021) supervised by the NIPA (National IT Industry Promotion Agency). And this work was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2011-0011266). And this paper is extended and improved from accepted paper of KCIC-2013/FCC-2014 conferences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NCSoft Corp., 12, Daewangpangyo-ro 644beon-gil, Bundang-gu, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, 463-400, South Korea

    Daxing Jin

  2. The Department of Multimedia Engineering, Dongguk University-Seoul, 26, Pildong 3 Ga, Jung-gu, Seoul, 100-715, South Korea

    Seoungjae Cho, Kyungeun Cho & Kyhyun Um

  3. The Department of Game Mobile Contents, Keimyung University, 1095, Dalgubeol-daero, Dalseo-gu, Daegu, 704-701, South Korea

    Yunsick Sung

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  1. Daxing Jin
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  2. Seoungjae Cho
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  3. Yunsick Sung
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  4. Kyungeun Cho
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  5. Kyhyun Um
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Correspondence to Kyungeun Cho.

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Jin, D., Cho, S., Sung, Y. et al. Reactive virtual agent learning for NUI-based HRI applications. Multimed Tools Appl 75, 15157–15170 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-014-2048-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-014-2048-5

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