Investigation of the Conditions for Continuous Information Conveyance by Two Autonomous Conversational Agents

Takamichi Isowa ^1* Kohei Ogawa ² Satoshi Sato ² Tomonori Kubota ² Hiroshi Ishiguro ¹

• ¹ Osaka University, Suita, Japan
• ² Nagoya University, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan

In recent years, information conveyance through conversation using agents such as robots and avatars has gained attention. Among them, conversation by two agents has been shown to encourage effective information conveyance. In addition, since previous studies has shown that incorporating subjective information, such as emotions, into conversations is effective, the medium for information conveyance including subjective information with two autonomous agents can provide information effectively. In this study, this medium is implemented, and the conditions necessary for it to convey information continuously are investigated.To realize this medium, first, the information contained in existing news is defined as the objective information and the preference toward news as the subjective information. This knowledge is constructed using a frame structure for the objective information and a network structure for the subjective information, and a method is established for obtaining these two types of information autonomously. Subsequently, this knowledge is distributed into two agents, who exchange their knowledge and represent their attempts to understand each other via a conversation.To ensure that the appropriate medium is achieved, experiments are conducted to confirm whether the subjective information that the agents autonomously obtained is as natural and consistent as that of humans. Experiments are also conducted to investigate the conditions for the medium to convey information continuously. The results of the experiments indicated that it is important to convey important information first and to use robots rather than text for continuous information conveyance.