GestureBot

A framework for integrating gesture generation models into interactive conversational agents.

Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) benefit from non-verbal behavior for natural and efficient interaction with users. Gesticulation – hand and arm movements accompanying speech – is an essential part of non-verbal behavior. Gesture generation models have been developed for several decades: starting with rule-based and ending with mainly data-driven methods. To date, recent end-to-end gesture generation methods have not been evaluated in a real-time interaction with users. We propose a proof-of-concept framework to facilitate the evaluation of modern gesture generation models in interaction.

Video demonstration at AAMAS '21.

Our framework contains three components: 1) a 3D interactive agent; 2) a chatbot backend; 3) a gesticulating system. Each component can be replaced, making the proposed framework applicable for investigating the effect of different gesturing models in real-time interactions with different communication modalities, chatbot backends, or different agent appearances.

Architecture diagram of the three components in the system.

The implementation of the system with two runnable examples is available in this github repository.