Towards an AI-Driven Talking Avatar in Virtual Reality for Investigative Interviews of Children
Date
2022
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Games Systems
Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) and gaming systems have advanced to
the stage where the current models and technologies can be used
to address real-world problems. The development of such systems
comes with different challenges, e.g., most of them related to system
performance, complexity and user testing. Using a virtual reality
(VR) environment, we have designed and developed a game-like
system aiming to mimic an abused child that can help to assist police
and child protection service (CPS) personnel in interview training
of maltreated children. Current research in this area points to the
poor quality of conducted interviews, and emphasises the need for
better training methods. Information obtained in these interviews
is the core piece of evidence in the prosecution process. We utilised
advanced dialogue models, talking visual avatars, and VR to build
a virtual child avatar that can interact with users. We discuss our
proposed architecture and the performance of the developed child
avatar prototype, and we present the results from the user study
conducted with CPS personnel. The user study investigates the
users’ perceived quality of experience (QoE) and their learning
effects. Our study confirms that such a gaming system can increase
the knowledge and skills of the users. We also benchmark and
discuss the system performance aspects of the child avatar. Our
results show that the proposed prototype works well in practice
and is well received by the interview experts.
Description
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Article
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Keywords
child abuse, forensic interview, International Resources, Norway, research, avatar, Virtual Reality
Citation
Hassan, S. Z., Salehi, P., Røed, R. K., Halvorsen, P., Baugerud, G. A., Johnson, M. S., ... & Sabet, S. S. (2022, June). Towards an AI-driven talking avatar in virtual reality for investigative interviews of children. In Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Games Systems (pp. 9-15).