15 August: fyi -- multi-modal communication, Paris

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Post-Doctoral position in multi-modal dialogue

DeadLine: 01/09/2008
"Catherine Pelachaud"
"Gérard Chollet"
http://www.telecom-paristech.fr/

We are looking for a post-doc to develop a multimodal
dialog system. The research takes place within the ANR
project MyBlog-3D.
https://picoforge.int-evry.fr/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Myblog3d/Web/

_Context:_
Virtual worlds are developing rapidly over the internet.
They are visited by avatars and staffed with Embodied
Conversational Agents (ECAs). An avatar is a representation
of a physical person while ECAs are autonomous 3D human-like
entities. Each person controls one or several avatars and
receives feedback from the virtual world on an audio-visual
display.

In the project MyBlog-3D, the avatar’s animation is driven
by the user’s behaviour in an unobtrusive manner. A small
webcam detects the arm movements as well as the facial
expressions a user displays. These detected motions are
reproduced in real-time onto the avatar. On the other hand,
the ECA animation is driven by a multimodal dialog system.

_Work to be done:_
Within MyBlog-3D we are developing a keyword spotting
algorithm. Detecting keywords allows us to get ‘important’
information for the ECA to have a ‘sense’ of what is being
said. Doing a semantic analysis is out of reach for a
real-time application and when the discourse domain is
simply too vast. Keyword spotting allows us to get some
information related to the conversation.

The aim of the present research is to develop a multimodal
dialog system that would allow the ECA to answer to the
user. The aim is to develop a template-based dialog system.
As input the system will take the recognized keyword. The
output of the dialog is communicative intentions. These
intentions are then converted into multimodal nonverbal
behaviours that are sent to an ECA system.

*Required knowledge*: C++, dialog system
*Location*: TELECOM-ParisTech – Paris **
37/39, rue Dareau 75014 Paris
http://www.telecom-paristech.fr/
*Project length*: 12-18 month
*Stipend*: around 2000 euros per month
*Contact*: send a CV to
"Catherine Pelachaud"
http://www.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~pelachaud/
"Gérard Chollet"
http://www.tsi.enst.fr/~chollet/

http://gdr-isis.org/rilk/gdr/Kiosque/poste.php?jobid=2873

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