This CRPA project will produce a human-like avatar exhibit for the Orlando Science Center that will verbally communicate with middle and high school grade visitors, engaging them in the subjects of computer science, artificial intelligence, and engineering. Human-like characteristics include features to match the demographics of the Center's clientele and verbal communication in the English language. In addition to discussing how avatars are developed and how artificial intelligence works, the avatar image will answer questions from the visitors on selected topics, including subjects from the media models of Avatar and IBM's Watson event on Jeopardy.
Considerable planning and research has gone into this project to make sure that the avatar is life-like and can engage in realistic dialog. The avatar images will resemble real individuals who have diverse demographic characteristics in order to enhance the human-computer interface. The system is designed to deal with background noise and antagonistic visitors. Evaluation at all levels (front-end, formative, and summative) will make the exhibit most effective and facilitate the goals of the project which are to inform the target audience on STEM subjects.
The desire to have electronic analogs of humans has been a goal for half of a century. This project builds on prior research in this area and is one of the most sophisticated contemporary models in the field. It is anticipated that this work may contribute to future applications in education and assistance for individuals with disabilities. Moreover, engagement with the avatar may ignite curiosity among young visitors and stimulate interest in science careers.
The outcome of the project was a museum exhibit which is now on permanent display at the Orlando Science Center in Orlando, FL. The following fictional vignette describes the exhibit as might conceivably be seen by a mamber of our target audience (middle school children).. A child (let’s call her Silvia) is visiting the Orlando Science Center with her middle school class. She walks by an exhibit about something called the "Turing Test". She doesn’t know what this Turing Test is, but becomes intrigued by the British-accented voice emanating from a lifelike avatar beckoning her to help it perform this mysterious test. She is curious enough to try this exhibit, and decides to press the bright green START button on the touch screen. The exhibit then begins …. The avatar is of none other than Dr. Alan Turing, the famed British mathematician, computer science pioneer and World War II hero. The avatar of Dr. Turing is shown in an uploaded image, standing in front of a replica of the Colossus computer that helped break the Nazi’s encryption code in World War II. Turing briefly explains the test that he conceived as a way to assess computer intelligence. He explains that if one is (unknowingly) conversing with a computer but is not certain whether one is interacting with a computer or with a real person, then the computer can be said to be intelligent. Turing then asks for Silvia’s help in building her own avatar so that they can subject it to the Turing Test. Then, under Turing’s guidance, Silvia "creates" a new avatar and endows it with a brain (programmed a priori) containing knowledge on some topics (e.g., planets, dinosaurs, natural disasters). Prompted by Turing, Silvia selects a face for the avatar from a gallery of photos of people of diverse ages, ethnicity and races. She opts for the photograph of Myles as the face of her avatar. Upon making this selection, a pre-built avatar of Myles that has strong resemblance to the real Myles, comes on screen, as shown in the second uploaded image. The virtual Myles has been given a priori knowledge about planets, mythical creatures, dinosaurs, and natural disasters, and is now able to answer simple but interesting questions from Silvia in these domains. Unlike the Turing avatar, the Myles avatar is not scripted. Instead, it uses a sophisticated artificial intelligence program developed at the INtelligent Systems Laboratory at the University of Central Florida to understand the questions and provide answers through spoken natural language. After a few question-and-answer cycles, Turing asks Silvia whether she might be led to thinking she was speaking to the real Myles, rather than an avatar of him - the essence of the Turing Test. In response to her answer (regardless of whether it is yes or no), the avatar then states that although it is advanced, this technology still requires bright young minds like hers to help make passing the Turing test a reality for future computers. Finally, it encourages Silvia to consider a career in computer science and then says goodbye. The intellectual merits lie in the use of the avatars as the medium through which to communicate about the avatar technology itself. This is done through a creative and engaging interaction that forms the core of the delivered exhibit. This communication medium, we believe, has great transformative potential in formal and informal science education. Additionally, we assessed our work through the museum audiences who evaluated it in its intended natural environment of the museum floor, rather than in a laboratory. The conducted research showcases the new advances in virtual humans to a public audience. Lastly, the moderator avatar (Turing's in our case) can be used to carry out future research into how human audiences react to such virtual human guides. This can be useful in learning how best to apply such tools for informal learning, but also for future applications in formal learning such as front ends to intelligent tutoring systems. The broader impacts will come from the use of this new technology to teach children about STEM subjects in a creative and highly engaging fashion. The exhibit encourages members of the target audience to contemplate potential careers in computer engineering and science. Furthermore, we created avatars of the actual researchers in our laboratories that provide a racial, ethnic and age diversity in order to demonstrate to the target audience that all are welcome in the field. The use of students to perform the research and the authoring of technical and scientific articles in appropriate conferences and journals are being used to disseminate the findings.
