Multimodal Interactions with Agents in Virtual Worlds

In this chapter we discuss our research on multimodal interaction in a virtual environment. The environment we have developed can be considered as a ‘laboratory’ for research on multimodal interactions and multimedia presentation, where we have multiple users and various agents that help the users to obtain and communicate information. The environment represents a theatre. The theatre has been built using VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) and it can be accessed through World Wide Web (WWW). This virtual theatre allows navigation input through keyboard function keys and mouse, but there is also a navigation agent which tries to understand keyboard natural language input and spoken commands. Feedback of the system is given using speech synthesis. We also have Karen, an information agent which allows a natural language dialogue with the user. In development are several talking faces for the different agents in the virtual world. We investigate how we can increase the user’s commitment to the environment and its agents by providing context and increasing the user’s feeling of ‘presence’ in the environment.