Presentation Agents That Adapt to Users' Visual Interest and Follow Their Preferences

This research proposes an interactive presentation system that employs eye gaze as an intuitive and unobtrusive input modality. Eye movements are an excellent clue to users' attention, visual interest, and preference. By analyzing and interpreting eye behavior in real-time, our system can adapt to the current (visual) interest state of the user, and thus provide a more personalized and 'attentive' experience of the presentation. The system implements a virtual presentation room, where research content is presented by a team of two highly realistic 3D agents in a dynamic and interactive way. A small preliminary study was conducted to investigate users' gaze behavior with a non-interactive version of the system. A demo video based on our system was awarded as the best application of life-like agents at the GALA event in 2006