Modelling realistic Virtual Humans (VH) and Social robots and user interaction

May 22 (Mon.), Duration: One day

Main organizer: Nadia Magnenat Thalmann, NTU Singapore, University of Geneva, Switzerland

With lectures: James Zhang, NTU Singapore, Yvain Tisserand, University of Geneva, Switzerland

 The goal of this tutorial is to give the CASA audience a broad view of how we model VHs and Social Robots, how we animate them and how we model their humanlike  functionalities from various input signals during interaction. Students and attendance will have the possibility to know either in VH or Social Robots what is the state of the Art and what is still needed to go for natural human-VH/social robots interaction.

We will describe the main modules necessary to simulate realistic interactive interaction for VH and Social Robots. We will first describe how we build Virtual Humans, and social robots and then we will explain what are the main  methods to capture social signals, how they are handled both by VH and social robots, and finally how the reaction is modelled.

The detailed description of the tutorial is as follows:

9:30
Introduction to the tutorial, Nadia Magnenat Thalmann

9:40
Modeling Virtual Humans: SoA and applications cases, Yvain Tisserand

10:45 – 11:00 
Coffee break

11:00
Building Children Social Robots, Nadia Magnenat Thalmann

11:30
Modeling Behaviour for VHs and Social Robots, Nadia Magnenat Thalmann

12:30 
Lunch

14:30
SoA on emotion classification, affect dynamics and episodic memory, James Zhang

15:45
Coffee break

16:00 
Gaze and multiparty interaction, Nadia Magnenat Thalmann

16:30
Social robots case studies, Nadia Magnenat Thalmann and James Zhang

16:45
Questions and Answers

17:00
End of the Tutorial

Attendance: all person interested in social interaction with VH or Social Robot

Slides will be available for tutorial attendees