• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.59-70
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• 2018

With the breakthrough of speech recognition technology, conversational agents have become pervasive through smartphones and smart speakers. The recognition accuracy of speech recognition technology has developed to the level of human beings, but it still shows limitations on understanding the underlying meaning or intention of words, or understanding long conversation. Accordingly, the users experience various errors when interacting with the conversational agents, which may negatively affect the user experience. In addition, in the case of smart speakers with a voice as the main interface, the lack of feedback on system and transparency was reported as the main issue when the users using. Therefore, there is a strong need for research on how users can better understand the capability of the conversational agents and mitigate negative emotions in error situations. In this study, we applied social strategies, "forewarning" and "apology", to conversational agent and investigated how these strategies affect users' perceptions of the agent in breakdown situations. For the study, we created a series of demo videos of a user interacting with a conversational agent. After watching the demo videos, the participants were asked to evaluate how they liked and trusted the agent through an online survey. A total of 104 respondents were analyzed and found to be contrary to our expectation based on the literature study. The result showed that forewarning gave a negative impression to the user, especially the reliability of the agent. Also, apology in a breakdown situation did not affect the users' perceptions. In the following in-depth interviews, participants explained that they perceived the smart speaker as a machine rather than a human-like object, and for this reason, the social strategies did not work. These results show that the social strategies should be applied according to the perceptions that user has toward agents.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.320-327
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• 2021

We aim to investigate the effects of task type and user gender on the expected gender of chatbots. We conducted an online study of 381 participants who selected the gender (female, male, or neutral) for chabots performing six different tasks. Our results indicate that users expect human- gendered chatbots for all tasks and that the expected gender of a chatbot is significantly different depending on the task type. Users expected chatting, counseling, healthcare and clerical work to be done by female chatbots; professional and customer service work were expected to be done by male chatbots. A tendency for participants to prefer chatbots of the same-gendered as themselves is revealed in several tasks for both male and female users. However, this homophily tendency is stronger for female users. We conclude by suggesting practical guidelines for designing chatbot services that reflect user expectations.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.650-657
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• 2003

We describe a scheme for developing character-based interface within the context of an agent-based tutoring system in the Web environment. The ideas in this paper stem from original work representing aspects of human emotion in tutoring computer models, where may provide mote natural ways for students to communicate with digital learning materials. The proposed system model is a set of software services that enable developers to incorporate interactive animated characters into their Web pages designed for on-line lectures. The prototypical application is developed and shown for validating the applicability and the effectiveness of this model in real tutoring settings.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2003.04c
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• pp.585-587
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• 2003

본 논문에서는 트리 기반 대화 인터페이스에서 수신되는 대화 메시지를 기록하는 위치에 의한 대화 창의 이동을 최소화하는 방법을 제안한다. 기존의 트리 기반 대화 인터페이스에서 수신되는 대화 메시지의 응답 관계에 따라 대화 메시지를 기록하는 위치가 분산되어 위치할 수 있다. 이러한 다양한 위치에 의하여 대화 인터페이스에서 대화 창의 이동이 많아짐으로 대화자가 대와의 내용을 파악하기 어렵다. 그러므로 본 논문에서는 트리 기반 대화 인터페이스에서 대화자가 최근 접근한 대화 메시지 정보를 이용하여 대화창의 이동을 최소화하는 방법을 기술한다. 적용 예로서 XML과 JAVA를 이용하여 구현하였으며 응용분야로는 온라인 게임과 원격 교육 등이다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2003.10b
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• pp.427-729
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• 2003

인터넷의 사용이 보편화됨에 따라 빠르게 변화하는 사용자의 요구를 만족시킴과 동시에 편리하고 유용한 서비스를 제공하기 위하여 사용자와 자연스럽게 의사소통할 수 있는 대화형 에이전트의 연구가 활발히 진행되고 있다. 그러나 현재 상용되고 있는 대부분의 대화형 에이전트들은 도메인 제한적 정보만을 제공하는 경향이 있어 도메인 변경의 경우 스크립트에서부터 새롭게 설계해야 하는 이중 부담을 겪고 있다. 본 논문에서는 스크립트 설계자가 특별한 사전 지식 없이도 간단한 입력 절차만 거쳐 자동으로 스크립트를 재구성할 수 있는 스크립트 인터페이스 구현에 초점을 맞춘다. 이 때 자연어로 입력되는 사용자 질의의 다양한 어휘들을 자동으로 대표 언어로 변환시킬 수 있도록 온톨로지 개념을 도입하여 동의어 사전을 구축함으로써 시스템의 효율성을 극대화한다. 또한 질의에 대한 다양한 답변 생성을 가능하게 하며, 실제 의류 사이트를 안내하는 대화형 에이전트를 구현하여 적용해 봄으로써 그 가능성을 알아본다.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.551-563
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• 2022

This study aims to identify the effect on the user experiences when the embodied agent in a self-driving car interacts with emotional expressions by using 'interjection'. An experimental study was designed with two conditions: the inclusion of injections in the agent's conversation feedbacks (with interjections vs. without interjections) and the type of conversation (task-oriented conversation vs. social-oriented conversation). The online experiment was conducted with the four video clips of conversation scenario treatments and measured intimacy, likability, trust, social presence, perceived anthropomorphism, and future intention to use. The result showed that when the agent used interjection, the main effect on social presence was found in both conversation types. When the agent did not use interjection in the task-oriented conversation, trust and future intention to use were higher than when the agent talked with emotional expressions. In the context of the conversation with the AI agent in a self-driving car, we found only the effect of adding emotional expression by using interjection on the enhancing social presence, but no effect on the other user experience factors.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.4270-4284
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• 2019

This study presents a reference model (RM) and the architecture of a cognitive health advisor (CHA) that integrates information with ambient intelligence. By controlling the information using the CHA platform, the reference model can provide various ambient intelligent solutions to a user. Herein, a novel approach to a CHA RM based on evolutional cyber-physical systems is proposed. The objective of the CHA RM is to improve personal health by managing data integration from many devices as well as conduct a new feedback cycle, which includes training and consulting to improve quality of life. The RM can provide an overview of the basis for implementing concrete software architectures. The proposed RM provides a standardized clarification for developers and service designers in the design and implementation process. The CHA RM provides a new approach to developing a digital healthcare model that includes integrated systems, subsystems, and components. New features for chatbots and feedback functions set the position of the conversational interface system to improve human health by integrating information, analytics, and decisions and feedback as an advisor on the CHA platform.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.425-432
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• 1987

The microprogram is the key technology of the implementation of the processor's control unit. But the coding and testing it is the most tedious process in the developing a new computer system. We developed the conversational micro architecture simulator(C-MAS) in order to use it as a microprogram development tool and a run time analyzer of the microprogram. We discuss the hardware description language(HDL) for a smulation, the design constraints of the C-MAS, and the user interface of it in this paper. We used the C language as the description language, and developed it on the berkeley UNIX4.2.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.181-192
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• 2004

This paper presents an efficient speech interactive agent rendering smooth car navigation and Telematics services, by employing embedded automatic speech recognition (ASR), distributed speech recognition (DSR) and text-to-speech (ITS) modules, all while enabling safe driving. A speech interactive agent is essentially a conversational tool providing command and control functions to drivers such' as enabling navigation task, audio/video manipulation, and E-commerce services through natural voice/response interactions between user and interface. While the benefits of automatic speech recognition and speech synthesizer have become well known, involved hardware resources are often limited and internal communication protocols are complex to achieve real time responses. As a result, performance degradation always exists in the embedded H/W system. To implement the speech interactive agent to accommodate the demands of user commands in real time, we propose to optimize the hardware dependent architectural codes for speed-up. In particular, we propose to provide a composite solution through memory reconfiguration and efficient arithmetic operation conversion, as well as invoking an effective out-of-vocabulary rejection algorithm, all made suitable for system operation under limited resources.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.873-892
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• 1998

In this paper, we propose an architecture of multimedia communication terminal that can e used in broadband ISDN environments. To design and implement the multimedia communication terminal, we analyzed the structure of multimedia terminals and the types of services which is recommended by public and private standard or ganization, such as ITU-T, Digital Audio-Visual Council(davic) and ATM Forum. The multifunctional communication terminal designed in this paper could allow inter-working between existing communication terminals on the heterogeneousnetwork and accept current and advanced multimedia communication application flexible. An implemented terminal is consisted of the multimedia processing board and the ATm interface board that is installed in PCI bus on personal computer. The integrated service multimedia communication terminal that is implemented supports retrieval, distributive and conversational communication service simultaneously. And then we performaned functional module test according to the individual communication services.