Animated conversation: rule-based generation of facial expression, gesture & spoken intonation for multiple conversational agents

Abstract

We describe an implemented system which automatically generates and animates conversations between multiple human-like agents with appropriate and synchronized speech, intonation, facial expressions, and hand gestures. Conversation is created by a dialogue planner that produces the text as well as the intonation of the utterances. The speaker/listener relationship, the text, and the intonation in turn drive facial expressions, lip motions, eye gaze, head motion, and arm gestures generators. Coordinated arm, wrist, and hand motions are invoked to create semantically meaningful gestures. Throughout we will use examples from an actual synthesized, fully animated conversation.