Goal of the INTAKT (interactive avatar communication technology) project is to create information systems which includes an emotional, intelligent and visual counterpart. A simplified service that has an “Ambient Personality“ results in a higher approval towards electronical systems.
In the INTAKT project Charamel and the German research centre for artificial intelligence (DFKI) develop an all-purpose technology to integrate an emotional intelligent and visual dialogue-partner to information systems. "Ambient Intelligence" is upgraded to "Ambient Personality" to gain a greater acceptance of electronic systems by improving usability and adding a human touch.
The objective is to make the technology more attractive to SMB by standardisation and a reduction of the costs for recent authoring tools. The INTAKT technology adopts results of previous research and developments. It merges different input and output modes, like speech, gesture, sensor signal and other ways of communication. Therefore, new approaches of creating interactive systems and presenting real-time animation are studied and put into effect. That makes also the use, adaptability and maintenance of avatars easier. The key element are Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA), meaning materialised intelligent software solutions communicating with speech and gesture.
All results of the project are used in the development of marketable products. These are modular solutions for agencies or SMB, which create individual applications or use complete turn-key systems for complex technology projects. The modular solutions are applied for the personalisation of e.g. web and internet applications, terminals, e-learning, information systems and complex projects in different fields, like automotive, bank terminals, entertainment systems or navigation.
