Artificial human companions may be any kind of hardware Hardware is a general term for the physical artifacts of a technology. It may also mean the physical components of a computer system, in the form of computer hardware or software Computer software, or just software, is the collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions telling a computer what to do. The term was coined to contrast to the old term hardware . In contrast to hardware, software is intangible, meaning it "cannot be touched". Software is also sometimes used in a more creation designed to give companionship to a person. These can include digital pets A digital pet , is a type of artificial human companion. They are usually kept for companionship or enjoyment. People may keep a digital pet in lieu of a real pet, such as the popular Tamagotchi The Tamagotchi is a handheld digital pet created in Japan by Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ Co. Ltd., and Aki Maita of Bandai Co. Ltd. It was first sold by Bandai in 1996 in Japan. Over 70,000,000 Tamagotchis have been sold world-wide as of 2008. Most Tamagotchis are housed in a small egg-shaped computer with an interface usually consisting of three buttons,, or robots A robot is an automatically guided machine which is able to do tasks on its own, almost always due to electronically-programmed instructions. Another common characteristic is that by its appearance or movements, a robot often conveys a sense that it has intent or agency of its own, such as the well-known Sony Sony Corporation (TYO: 6758, NYSE: SNE), or commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate with revenue exceeding ¥ 7.730.0 trillion, or $78.88 billion U.S. (FY2008). Sony is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics, AIBO AIBO was one of several types of robotic pets designed and manufactured by Sony; there have been several different models since their introduction on May 11, 1999. AIBO was discontinued in 2006. Virtual companions can be used as a form of entertainment Entertainment consists of any activity which provides a diversion or permits people to amuse themselves in their leisure time. Entertainment is generally passive, such as watching opera or a movie. Active forms of amusement, such as recreations or sports, are more often considered to be recreation. Activities such as personal reading or practicing, or they can be medical or functional, to assist the elderly in maintaining an acceptable standard of life.
Introduction
Senior citizens make up an increasing percentage of the population in the Western nations, and, according to Judith Masthoff of the University of Brighton The University of Brighton is an English university based in the city of Brighton & Hove with a community of 21,000 students and 2,600 staff based on five campuses in Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings. It has one of the best teaching quality ratings in the UK and a strong research record, factors which contribute to its reputation as a leading, they tend to live alone and have a limited social network. Studies also show that those elderly living in such circumstances have an increased risk of developing depression Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. The term "major depressive disorder" was selected by the American Psychiatric Association to designate this symptom cluster as a mood disorder and dementia Dementia is a serious loss of cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging. It may be static, the result of a unique global brain injury, or progressive, resulting in long-term decline due to damage or disease in the body. Although dementia is far more common in the geriatric population, it and have a shorter life span than more socially connected seniors.
It has been known to gerontologists Gerontology is the study of the social, psychological and biological aspects of aging. It is distinguished from geriatrics, which is the branch of medicine that studies the disease of the elderly for some time that pets A pet is an animal kept for companionship and enjoyment or a household animal, as opposed to wild animals or to livestock, laboratory animals, working animals or sport animals, which are kept for economic or productive reasons. The most popular pets are noted for their loyal or playful characteristics, for their attractive appearance, or for their, particularly those such as cats The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felines and felids, is a small domesticated carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and ability to hunt vermin and household pests. Cats have been associated with humans for at least 9,500 years, and are currently the most popular pet in the and dogs The dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The domestic dog has been one of the most widely kept working, hunting and companion animals in human history that exhibit a range of behaviors Behavior, or behaviour , refers to the actions of a system or organism , usually in relation to its environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment. It is the response of the system or organism to various stimuli or inputs, whether internal or external, conscious or subconscious, overt or and emotions Emotion is the complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience". Emotion is associated with mood, temperament, personality and disposition,, help prevent depression in the elderly. Studies also show some beneficial results from electronic pets such as Sony Sony Corporation (TYO: 6758, NYSE: SNE), or commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate with revenue exceeding ¥ 7.730.0 trillion, or $78.88 billion U.S. (FY2008). Sony is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics,'s Aibo AIBO was one of several types of robotic pets designed and manufactured by Sony; there have been several different models since their introduction on May 11, 1999. AIBO was discontinued in 2006 and Omron Omron Corporation (TYO: 6645) is a Japanese electronics company based in Kyoto's NeCoRo; however, the therapeutic value of such artificial pets remains limited by the capabilities of technology Technology is the usage and knowledge of tools, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization. The word technology comes from the Greek technología — téchnē (τέχνη), an 'art', 'skill' or 'craft' and -logía (-λογία), the study of something, or the branch of knowledge of a discipline. The term can either be applied generally.
Television Television is a widely used telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images, either monochromatic ("black and white") or color, usually accompanied by sound. "Television" may also refer specifically to a television set, television programming or television transmission. The word is derived from mixed Latin viewing among the elderly represents a significant percentage of how their waking hours are spent, and the percentage increases directly with age. Seniors typically watch TV to avoid loneliness; yet TV limits social interaction, thus creating a vicious circle.
It is Masthoff's contention that it is possible to develop an interactive, personalized form of television that would allow the viewer to engage in natural conversation A conversation is communication between two or more people. Conversations are the ideal form of communication in some respects, since they allow people with different views on a topic to learn from each other. A speech, on the other hand, is an oral presentation by one person directed at a group. For a successful conversation, the partners must and learn from these conversations.
Such applications have been with us for decades. The earliest, such as the "psychologist" program ELIZA ELIZA is a computer program and an early example of primitive natural language processing. ELIZA operated by processing users' responses to scripts, the most famous of which was DOCTOR, a simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist. Using almost no information about human thought or emotion, DOCTOR sometimes provided a startlingly human-like, did little more than identify key words and feed them back to the user, but even forty years ago Colby's PARRY program at Stanford university, far superior to ELIZA, exhibited many of the features researchers now seek to put into a dialog system A dialog system is a computer system intended to converse with a human, with a coherent structure. Dialog systems have employed text, speech, graphics, haptics, gestures and other modes for communication on both the input and output channel. An architecture for a typical spoken dialog system is shown in the figure below, above all some form of emotional response and having something "it wants to say", rather than being completely passive like ELIZA. The Internet now has a wide range of chatterbots A chatbot is a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods. Traditionally, the aim of such simulation has been to fool the user into thinking that the program's output has been produced by a human (the Turing test). Programs playing this role are sometimes referred but they are no more advanced, in terms of plausibility as conversationalists, than the systems of forty years ago and most users tire of them after a couple of exchanges. Meanwhile, two developments have advanced the field in different ways: first, the Loebner Prize The Loebner Prize is an annual competition in artificial intelligence that awards prizes to the chatterbot considered by the judges to be the most human-like. The format of the competition is that of a standard Turing test. A human judge poses text questions to a computer program and a human being via computer. Based upon the answers, the judge, an annual competition for the best computer conversationalist, substantially advanced performance. Its winners could be considered the best chatterbots, but even they never approach a human level of capacity as can be seen from the site.
Secondly a great deal of industrial and academic research has gone into effective conversationalists, usually for specific tasks, such as selling rail or airline tickets. The core issue in all such systems is the dialog manager A dialog manager is the core component of a dialog system. It maintains the history of the dialog, adopts certain dialog strategy , retrieve the content (stored in files or databases), and decides on the best response to the user. The dialog manager maintains the dialog flow which is the element of system that determines what the system should say next and so appear intelligent or compliant with the task at hand.This research, along with work on computing emotion, speech research and Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) has led to the beginnings of more companionable systems, particularly for the elderly. The EU supported Companions Project COMPANIONS is a European research project funded under the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission and carried out by 15 academic and commercial partners from seven European countries and the United States is a 4-year, 15-site project to build such companions, based at the University of Sheffield The University of Sheffield is a leading research university, located in Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England. Ranked 40 in the World's top 100 Universities by one study and constantly ranked amongst the top 20 universities in Britain and Europe according to The Good University Guide. The university has produced five Nobel Prize winners so far.
See also
- Digital pet A digital pet , is a type of artificial human companion. They are usually kept for companionship or enjoyment. People may keep a digital pet in lieu of a real pet
- Eccky Eccky was created in August 2005 by Dutch developer Media Republic in association with MSN in the Netherlands. Eccky has characteristics of life simulation and virtual pet games. The gameplay of this first version of Eccky involved a virtual baby, or Eccky, which was born on the basis of information derived from both Eccky user parents. Eccky used
- Ludobot A ludobot is a type of artificial human companion: an entertainment robot, from Latin ludo and bot (robot)
- Tamagotchi The Tamagotchi is a handheld digital pet created in Japan by Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ Co. Ltd., and Aki Maita of Bandai Co. Ltd. It was first sold by Bandai in 1996 in Japan. Over 70,000,000 Tamagotchis have been sold world-wide as of 2008. Most Tamagotchis are housed in a small egg-shaped computer with an interface usually consisting of three buttons,
- Virtual Woman Virtual Woman is a software program that has elements of a chatbot, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, a video game, and a virtual human. It claims to be the oldest form of virtual life in existence, as it has been continuously running or in use since the late 1980s. Recent releases of the program can update their intelligence by connecting
External links
Categories: Multimodal interaction
Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:35:44 GMT+00:00
PhysOrg.com (press release) These enabled him to formulate an artificial sex attractant device, the "tick decoy." Dr. Sonenshine showed that impregnating plastic mimics of the female ...
