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Fig. 13.
Greta, Obadia, Poppy and Prudence. They are four agents implemented on the open
source system Greta. Each one has its own personality and level of understanding. When inter-
acting together, different levels of non-verbal synchrony should appear between the agents of this
group.
Our model has been tested and its principle has been validated in agent-agent con-
text. To go a step farther, in “wild world” situations involving humans, two elements
must be added: Understanding of language during interaction with human; Recognition
of non-verbal behaviours of human users. In the near future, we will adapt the present
neural architecture to the open source virtual agent Greta [20]. The system Greta en-
ables one to generate multi-modal (verbal and non-verbal) behaviours online and with
accurate timing. The verbal signals will be modelled as elements of “small-talk” and the
non-verbal signal will be modelled as, pitch accents, pauses, head nods, head shakes and
facial expressions. To test the real impact of such a model on human perception of in-
teraction, we will perform perceptive evaluation: we aim to simulate a group of virtual
agents dialoguing with each other (see fig.4). Each agent will have its own personality
and level of understanding of what being said. This will lead to pattern of synchroni-
sation and disynchronisation. Among other, agents which share understanding should
display inter-synchrony pattern [3]. Finally, human observers should clearly fill which
agent is sharing understanding with which other agent.
In conclusion, we can notice that, in addition to the two main results of this study
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“disynchrony accounts for misunderstanding” and “synchronisation and disynchroni-
sation are very quick phenomenons”
another result is the model itself. It proposes a
link between synchrony and inter-subjectivity by the use of dynamical system coupling:
synchrony and dynamical coupling emerge together when agents mutually understand
each other; as a consequence synchrony account for good interaction.
We believe, this model is a start to answer the issues of what is the part of dynamical
coupling between agents involved in verbal interaction? What is the part of emerging
dynamics in the communication of meanings and intentions? And moreover, how these
two parts can co-exist and feed each other?
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