“Virtual Eve” Ushers in New Era of Human & Computer Interaction

The human-ish performance of a new virtual teacher called Eve created by Massey researchers has drawn the attention of computer scientists and geeks around the globe. She is known in the information sciences as an “intelligent” or “affective tutoring” system that can adapt its response to the emotional state of people by interaction through a computer system. The system, specifically referred to as “Easy with Eve” is the first of its kind.

Unfortunately, virtual Eve has an annoying voice. The accent is fine, but the voice itself is less than soothing—perhaps to keep the kids awake as she creepily explains that she’ll be “watching you, but you won’t know when”. As far as appearance goes, the researchers were probably going for a hip, urbanite, but the end result suggests “homeless lady needs a shower”. Other than those superficial complaints, Eve is a fairly amazing innovation.

Indeed, the ability of virtual Eve to alter her presentation according to the reaction of the child facing her at the keyboard is being hailed as an exciting new development in the growing $25 billion e-learning market.

The Massey scientists, led by Dr Hossein Sarrafzadeh at the Auckland-based Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences, tell the story of creating Eve and the teaching system in the international journal, Elsevier.

Because one-to-one teaching is known to be the most effective teaching method, Dr Sarrafzadeh says the researchers wanted to create a virtual teacher that could pick up body language and facial expressions – like a real teacher – to interact and to ensure they are holding the attention of students.

He says the realization that software systems would significantly improve performance if they could adapt to the emotions of the user has spawned research and development in the field of affective or intelligent tutoring systems.

“With rising demand for long-distance learning and online tutoring, a computer programe capable of detecting human emotions may become a critical teaching tool.”

Although Eve was developed for one-to-one math instruction with eight-year-olds, she is a significant new character in the future of human computer interaction and could be a personalized virtual tutor by any name. In other words, we will hopefully soon be able to give her a new voice and haircut.

Linked to a child via computer, the animated character or virtual tutor can tell if the child is frustrated, angry or confused by the on-screen teaching session and can adapt the tutoring session appropriately.

The animated Eve can ask questions, give feedback, discuss questions and solutions and show emotion. To develop the software for this system the Massey team observed children and their interactions with teachers and captured them on thousands of images.

From these images of facial expression, gestures and body movements they developed programs that would capture and recognise facial expression, body movement, and (via a mouse) heart rate and skin resistance.

The system uses a network of computer systems, mainly embedded devices, to detect student emotion and other significant bio-signals.

“When we interact with people we expect them to take note of our feelings and reactions. Soon we will be able to expect the same from a computer,” says Dr Sarrafzadeh.

The introductory video of virtual Eve is available online: http://news.massey.ac.nz/quicktime/eve-intro.mov

Posted by Rebecca Sato

*This post was adapted from a news release issued by Massey University.

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Link:
http://masseynews.massey.ac.nz/2007/Massey_News/issue-18/stories/01-18-07.html

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