ViCA: Combining visual, social, and task-oriented conversational AI in a healthcare setting

Georgios Pantazopoulos; Jeremy Bruyere; Maria-Vasiliki Nikandrou; Thibaud Boissier; Supun Hemanthage; Sachish Binha; Vidyul Shah; Christian Dondrup; Oliver Lemon

doi:10.1145/3462244.3479909

ViCA: Combining visual, social, and task-oriented conversational AI in a healthcare setting

Georgios Pantazopoulos, Jeremy Bruyere, Maria-Vasiliki Nikandrou, Thibaud Boissier, Supun Hemanthage, Sachish Binha, Vidyul Shah, Christian Dondrup, Oliver Lemon

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

2 Citations (Scopus)

208 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Recent developments in computer vision and conversational systems have provided the AI community with novel perspectives towards improving the cognitive capabilities of engaging socially assistive robots. We show how to develop conversational skills for a hospital receptionist robot that incorporates social conversation based on visual information as well as task-based dialog. Fusing the traditional modular conversational system architecture with recent developments in computer vision and scene graph research, our agent (called ĝViCA') supports both visual question answering and social conversational capabilities based on the visual scene. In particular, our agent can provide guidance to users by locating visible objects in the room and can engage in social dialog using visual prompts, such as the user's clothing or possessions. We conduct a comprehensive online evaluation study with 21 participants, showcasing that the ViCA system is perceived as both helpful and entertaining.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	ICMI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
Pages	71-79
Number of pages	9
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450384810
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3462244.3479909
Publication status	Published - 18 Oct 2021
Event	23rd ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction 2021 - Montreal, Canada Duration: 18 Oct 2021 → 22 Oct 2021

Conference

Conference	23rd ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction 2021
Abbreviated title	ICMI 2021
Country/Territory	Canada
City	Montreal
Period	18/10/21 → 22/10/21

Keywords

conversational agents
human robot interaction
multimodal interaction

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Computer Science Applications
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Hardware and Architecture
Human-Computer Interaction

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10.1145/3462244.3479909

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Cite this

Pantazopoulos, G., Bruyere, J., Nikandrou, M.-V., Boissier, T., Hemanthage, S., Binha, S., Shah, V., Dondrup, C., & Lemon, O. (2021). ViCA: Combining visual, social, and task-oriented conversational AI in a healthcare setting. In ICMI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (pp. 71-79). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3462244.3479909

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abstract = "Recent developments in computer vision and conversational systems have provided the AI community with novel perspectives towards improving the cognitive capabilities of engaging socially assistive robots. We show how to develop conversational skills for a hospital receptionist robot that incorporates social conversation based on visual information as well as task-based dialog. Fusing the traditional modular conversational system architecture with recent developments in computer vision and scene graph research, our agent (called ĝViCA') supports both visual question answering and social conversational capabilities based on the visual scene. In particular, our agent can provide guidance to users by locating visible objects in the room and can engage in social dialog using visual prompts, such as the user's clothing or possessions. We conduct a comprehensive online evaluation study with 21 participants, showcasing that the ViCA system is perceived as both helpful and entertaining.",

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Pantazopoulos, G, Bruyere, J, Nikandrou, M-V, Boissier, T, Hemanthage, S, Binha, S, Shah, V, Dondrup, C & Lemon, O 2021, ViCA: Combining visual, social, and task-oriented conversational AI in a healthcare setting. in ICMI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction. Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 71-79, 23rd ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction 2021, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 18/10/21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3462244.3479909

ViCA: Combining visual, social, and task-oriented conversational AI in a healthcare setting. / Pantazopoulos, Georgios; Bruyere, Jeremy; Nikandrou, Maria-Vasiliki et al.
ICMI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction. Association for Computing Machinery, 2021. p. 71-79.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

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AU - Nikandrou, Maria-Vasiliki

AU - Boissier, Thibaud

AU - Hemanthage, Supun

AU - Binha, Sachish

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ViCA: Combining visual, social, and task-oriented conversational AI in a healthcare setting

Abstract

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Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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