Action scheduling in humanoid conversational agents

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to action scheduling in lifelike humanoid agents. The action scheduler constitutes a module in the agent which links the mental processes to the physical actions of the agent. It receives requests from the agent's behavior generating modules and schedules them to be executed at the appropriate time, handling such tasks as speech-to-action synchronization, concurrent and overlapping behavior blending, and behavior conflict resolution. The optimal approach to action scheduling will vary from system to system, depending upon the characteristics of the system, since the ultimate action scheduler would accommodate a fully functional human representation-a goal which is out of the scope of research today. This paper presents an action scheduler for a real-time three-dimensional multi-modal humanoid agent.