Communication is not just about the transfer of verbal information. Gestures, facial expressions, intonation and body language are all major sources of information during conversation. This book presents a new perspective on communication, one that will help us to better understand humans, and also to build machines that can communicate.

When people communicate face to face they don't just exchange verbal information. Rather, communication encompasses the whole body. Communication partners synchronize their body sway, and mimic or imitate each other's body postures and actions. They produce a multitude of manual and facial gestures that help to illustrate what is being said, show how communication partners feel, or or reveal verbal deception. Moreover, face-to-face communication takes place in shared contexts where partners jointly attend and refer to the same objects, often while working on joint tasks such as carrying a table or repairing a car together. Traditionally, communication research has neglected these parts of communication using the engineering model of signal transmission as the main theoretical metaphor. This book takes a new look at recent empirical findings in the cognitive and neurosciences, showing that the traditional approach is insufficient, and presenting a new interdisciplinary perspective, the Embodied Communication perspective. The core claim of the Embodied Communication perspective is that human communication involves parallel and highly interactive couplings between communication partners. These couplings range from low-level systems for performing and understanding instrumental actions, like the mirror system, to higher-systems that interpret symbols in a cultural context. The book can also serve as a guide for engineers who construct artificial agents and robots that should be able to interact with humans.

This handbook provides a comprehensive grounding of the history, methods, debates and theories that contribute to the study of human-machine communication.

Applied Computational Intelligence, presents comprehensive collection of algorithms, computational methods, implementation platform and experimental studies based on real world problems. Addresses the benefits of computational Intelligence in decision support. It will guide you with suitable examples on how to handle raw dataset and the methodologies of applied Computational Intelligence in today's challenging problems.

This book examines the theoretical and methodological research issues that underlie the design and use of interactive technology. The analysis directs attention to three human capacities: cognition, communication and interaction. The examination of these capacities is embedded in understanding concepts of communication and interaction and their application; conceptions of knowledge and cognition; and the role of aesthetics and ethics in design.

Embodied conversational agents (ECA) and speech-based human-machine interfaces can together represent more advanced and more natural human-machine interaction. Fusion of both topics is a challenging agenda in research and production spheres. The important goal of human-machine interfaces is to provide content or functionality in the form of a dialo

In recent years there has been increasing excitement concerning the potential of Artificial Intelligence to transform human society. This book addresses the leading edge of research in this area. The research described aims to address present incompatibilities of Human and Machine reasoning and learning approaches. According to the influential US funding agency DARPA (originator of the Internet and Self-Driving Cars) this new area represents the Third Wave of Artificial Intelligence (3AI, 2020s-2030s), and is being actively investigated in the US, Europe and China. The chapters of this book have been authored by a mixture of UK and other international specialists. Some of the key questions addressed by the Human-Like Computing programme include how AI systems might 1) explain their decisions effectively, 2) interact with human beings in natural language, 3) learn from small numbers of examples and 4) learn with minimal supervision. Solving such fundamental problems involves new foundational research in both the Psychology of perception and interaction as well as the development of novel algorithmic approaches in Artificial Intelligence.

Embodied agents play an increasingly important role in cognitive interaction technology. The two main types of embodied agents are virtual humans inhabiting simulated environments and humanoid robots inhabiting the real world. So far research on embodied communicative agents has mainly explored their potential for practical applications. However, the design of communicative artificial agents can also be of great heuristic value for the scientific study of communication. It allows researchers to isolate, implement, and test essential properties of inter-agent communications in operational models. Modeling communication with robots and virtual humans thus involves the vision of using communicative machines as research tools. Artificial systems that reproduce certain aspects of natural, multimodal communication help to elucidate the internal mechanisms that give rise to different aspects of communication. In short, constructing embodied agents who are able to communicate may help us to understand the principles of human communication. As a comprehensive theme, “Embodied Communication in Humans and Machines” was taken up by an international research group hosted by Bielefeld University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF – Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung) from October 2005 through September 2006. The overarching goal of this research year was to develop an integrated perspective of embodiment in communication, establishing bridges between lower-level, sensorimotor functions and a range of higher-level, communicative functions involving language and bodily action. The present volume grew out of a workshop that took place during April 5–8, 2006 at the ZiF as a part of the research year on embodied communication.

The Handbook of Technical Communication brings together a variety of topics which range from the role of technical media in human communication to the linguistic, multimodal enhancement of present-day technologies. It covers the area of computer-mediated text, voice and multimedia communication as well as of technical documentation. In doing so, the handbook takes professional and private communication into account. Special emphasis is put on technical communication by means of web 2.0 technologies and its standardization in system development. In summary, the handbook deals with theoretical issues of technical communication and its practical impact on the development and usage of text and speech technologies.