News Digest [11.25]

Media Lab Creates Center for Future Storytelling

MIT News (11/18/08)

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Laboratory, backed by a $25 million commitment from Plymouth Rock Studios, has opened the Center for Future Storytelling, a new research center that will apply leading-edge technologies to make stories more interactive, improvisational, and social.  The researchers want to transform audiences into active participants in the storytelling process by combining the real and virtual worlds to enable everyone to make their own unique stories with user-generated content on the Web.  Research at the center also will focus on how to revolutionize imaging and display technologies, including the development of next-generation cameras and programmable studios.  "Storytelling is at the very root of what makes us uniquely human," says Media Lab director Frank Moss.  "But how we tell our stories depends on another uniquely human characteristic--our ability to invent and harness technology."  Research at the center will include on-set motion capture technology to accurately and unobtrusively merge human performers and digital character models, cameras that will lead to new visual art forms, morphable movie studios, holographic television, and next-generation synthetic performer technologies, including highly expressive robotic or animated characters.  The center will draw from technologies developed at the Media Lab, such as digital systems that understand people's emotions, or cameras capable of capturing the intent of the storyteller.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/medialab-plymouth-1118.html

 

A First in Online Gaming: Humans Team Up With AI Software

Northwestern University News Center (11/18/08) Leopold, Wendy

Northwestern University researchers have released an online game in which human players partner with artificial intelligence (AI) software as part of an effort to help computers learn to use language more naturally.  At the Web site give-challenge.org, players can team up with one of four AI software systems in a treasure hunt, and provide feedback on how well the systems give instructions for solving puzzles as part of the "GIVE: Generating Instructions in Virtual Environments" project.  "By collecting information from everyday computer users from around the world, we will be able to improve language processing for different kinds of intelligent agents," says Northwestern professor Justine Cassell.  Feedback from the gamers will be analyzed to compare how each IT system performed in the GIVE challenge.  The goal is to make computers better partners in a variety of virtual and real world situations.  "The information we get will help to build better pedestrian navigation systems, develop more realistic dialogue for virtual humans in immersive virtual worlds, and eventually improve interaction with mobile robots," says Cassell, who organized the GIVE challenge along with researchers from the United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany.  GIVE's AI systems are based on natural language generation (NLG) technology and were created by research teams in the United States and Europe.  The GIVE challenge is the largest initiative to evaluate NLG systems, and is the first time that NLG research has been made public for evaluation.
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2008/11/gaming.html