SWEETPEA: Software Tools for Programmable Embodied Agents

M. Kaminsky (MIT), P. Dourish, W. K. Edwards, A. LaMarca, M. Salisbury and I. Smith (Parc), 1998

Summary. The authors explore the application space of Programmable Emboddied Agents (portable, wireless, interactive devices embodying specific, differentiable, interactive characteristics. The present a framework for the design space and present applications in the context of this framework. They are able to show compelling applications (mail minder, printer manager, phone message minder) prototyped using their own widget set built on commodity hardware (in contrast with expensive research prototypes).

More detail...

PEAs "lie at the intersection" of three trends in interactive systems:
  1. Embodied interaction: because they are portable, PEAs provide a way to move across the boundary from the computational world into the real world and provide opportunity to exploit human interaction skills beyond clicking a mouse.
  2. Character-based Interfaces: anthropomorphism in an agent is more compelling than an annoying pop-up box.
  3. Unified multi-purpose interactive devices: A PEA can take on several diverse rolls -- as a person would. "A character-based interface makes this channel-switching natural."

Their framework divides the PEA application space across two axes: (1) synchronous ("channel") and asynchronous ("proxy") communication with respect to the action that the PEA app is reporting and (2)whether the application is reporting the actions of a person, device or event.

The PEA used was the Barney ActiMate. They "decoded" the PEA's protocol by observing communication between existing applications and the toy. Once the protocol was understood, they were able to build a Barney Component that applications could use to control Barney's motions and speech. They also assembled a set of widgets that could be used individually to use Barney for Notification, Indicating Values (arm position), Counting (squeeze left paws to count up, right paw to "return", foot to count down), Waiting (head moves back and forth slowly) and general Exploiting the Character (saying "Super-dee-duper").

They were unable to decode the voice data format, so they were limited to Barney's current vocabulary.

The paper is wonderfully written and serves as a great example for placing one's specific work into a broader, more research-oriented context.