Candace Sidner and Charles Rich are developing technology that will permit a computer agent like Karen to be a long-term virtual companion to an elderly person, keeping their calendar, helping them stay in touch with family, and encouraging then to exercise and eat right.
and diet. Karen can also remind her host about appoint- ments, set up Skype visits with friends and relatives, and carry out other useful tasks. Her behaviors are guided by a computer model that predicts when each activity is most appropriate given the time of day, what has happened so far in the current conversation, and the overall status of the relationship. "Karen is much more than a simple stimulus-response system," Rich says. "She has long-term goals for the relation- ship and a memory of past activities, and she can plan for the future." This project builds upon on a long history of research
on artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction by Sidner, Rich, and Bickmore. Karen's developers have been
gaining real-world experience with the current prototype over the past year through field studies that have put some of her capabilities to the test in the homes of isolated older adults in Boston. In the year ahead, Karen will spend up to six weeks in 20 homes in the project's first long-term study. The virtual agent technology behind Karen could also be
deployed in robots designed to serve as home companions. In fact, the final phase of this research will involve giving Karen a three-dimensional human-like head in a field test that will investigate whether people respond differently to a physically embodied agent than to a virtual one. "All the software developed through this work," Sidner
says, "will be freely available to help other researchers realize the goal of making virtual agents and robots part of the family."
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