This website and blog support the Virtual Humans book by David Burden and Maggi Savin-Baden published by Taylor & Francis in February 2019. Here you can find links to images, videos, papers, articles and application resources related to the topics covered by the book, and a blog maintained by the authors to track the development of this fascinating and vitally important topic.
Mind - Attention
Attention in AI, and particularly robotics, is better defined than perception. Where a sensor has a limited field of view then attention is the directing of those sensors onto the area of interest – and is found in the gaze control of robotic heads as they follow the conversation between two people speaking, or the movement of an object of interest. As well as the heightened interest in and analysis of the subject of the attention there is also often a corresponding reduction in the awareness of activity outside of the area (topical or spatial) of attention.
A classic example of attention is ‘inattention blindness’, as in the video experiment by Simons (1999), which clearly shows how people focusing on one activity may completely miss another activity in the same visual scene.
Kismet (by Dr. Cynthia Breazeal) is a classic example of a robot which displays attention, focusing on the user, as well as using a range on non-verbal communications.