Ebook: Conversational Informatics: An Engineering Approach

Conversational informatics investigates human behaviour with a view to designing conversational artifacts capable of interacting with humans in a conversational fashion. It spans a broad array of topics including linguistics, psychology and human-computer interaction. Until recently research in such areas has been carried out in isolation, with no attempt made to connect the various disciplines. Advancements in science and technology have changed this.

Conversational Informatics provides an interdisciplinary introduction to conversational informatics and places emphasis upon the integration of scientific approaches to achieve engineering goals and to advance further understanding of conversation.

It features a collection of surveys structured around four prominent research areas: conversational artifacts, conversational contents, conversation environment design and conversation measurement, analysis and modelling

• Conversational artifacts shows how synthetic characters or intelligent robots use eye gaze, gestures and other non-verbal communicators to interact.
• Conversational contents looks at developing techniques for acquiring, editing, distributing and utilising the contents that are produced and consumed in conversation.
• Conversation environment design explains techniques for creating intelligent virtual environments and for representing individuals within a virtual environment by monitoring and reproducing their non-verbal conversational behaviour.
• Conversation measurement, analysis and modelling demonstrate how conversational behaviour can be measured and analyzed. 

Conversational Informatics will be an invaluable resource for postgraduate students and researchers in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering as well as engineers and developers working in the field of automation, robotics and agents technology.Content:
Chapter 1 Introduction (pages 1–18): Toyoaki Nishida
Chapter 2 Conversational Agents and the Construction of Humorous Acts (pages 19–47): Anton Nijholt
Chapter 3 Why Emotions should be Integrated into Conversational Agents (pages 49–67): Christian Becker, Stefan Kopp and Ipke Wachsmuth
Chapter 4 More Than Just a Friendly Phrase: Multimodal Aspects of Polite Behavior in Agents (pages 69–84): Matthias Rehm and Elisabeth Andre
Chapter 5 Attentional Behaviors as Nonverbal Communicative Signals in Situated Interactions with Conversational Agents (pages 85–102): Yukiko I. Nakano and Toyoaki Nishida
Chapter 6 Attentional Gestures in Dialogues Between People and Robots (pages 103–115): Candace L. Sidner and Christopher Lee
Chapter 7 Dialogue Context for Visual Feedback Recognition (pages 117–131): Louis?Philippe Morency, Candace L. Sidner and Trevor Darrell
Chapter 8 Trading Spaces: How Humans and Humanoids Use Speech and Gesture to Give Directions (pages 133–160): Stefan Kopp, Paul A. Tepper, Kimberley Ferriman, Kristina Striegnitz and Justine Cassell
Chapter 9 Facial Gestures: Taxonomy and Application of Nonverbal, Nonemotional Facial Displays for Embodied Conversational Agents (pages 161–182): Goranka Zoric, Karlo Smid and Igor S. Pandzic
Chapter 10 Conversation Quantization and Sustainable Knowledge Globe (pages 183–200): Hidekazu Kubota, Yasuyuki Sumi and Toyoaki Nishida
Chapter 11 Automatic Text Presentation for the Conversational Knowledge Process (pages 201–216): Sadao Kurohashi, Daisuke Kawahara, Nobuhiro Kaji and Tomohide Shibata
Chapter 12 Video Content Acquisition and Editing for Conversation Scenes (pages 217–232): Yuichi Nakamura
Chapter 13 Personalization of Video Contents (pages 233–248): Noboru Babaguchi
Chapter 14 Conversational Content Acquisition by Ubiquitous Sensors (pages 249–267): Yasuyuki Sumi, Kenji Mase and Toyoaki Nishida
Chapter 15 Real?Time Human Proxy (pages 269–287): Rin?Ichiro Taniguchi and Daisaku Arita
Chapter 16 Lecture Archiving System (pages 289–303): Satoshi Nishiguchi, Koh Kakusho and Michihiko Minoh
Chapter 17 A Scientific Approach to Conversational Informatics: Description, Analysis, and Modeling of Human Conversation (pages 305–330): Yasuharu Den and Mika Enomoto
Chapter 18 Embodied Synchrony in Conversation (pages 331–351): Chika Nagaoka, Masashi Komori and Sakiko Yoshikawa
Chapter 19 Modeling Communication Atmosphere (pages 353–369): Tomasz M. Rutkowski and Danilo P. Mandic
Chapter 20 Analysis of Interaction Mechanisms in Online Communities (pages 371–380): Naohiro Matsumura
Chapter 21 Mutual Adaptation: A New Criterion for Designing and Evaluating Human–Computer Interaction (pages 381–402): Kazuhiro Ueda and Takanori Komatsu