Þjálfun íslensks máls og menningar í Sýndar-Reykjavík - verkefni lokið
Fréttatilkynning verkefnisstjórans.
A pilot study with a focus group of learners confirms the potential of the technology, by demonstrating that it is easy to use, provides relatively convincing voice and behavior and provides help with starting to speak the language.
Virtual Reykjavík combines Icelandic language technology, artificial intelligence and gaming to give learners of Icelandic an opportunity to practice speaking with virtual Icelanders populating a 3D virtual replica of downtown Reykjavík, right there in their web-browser. Each interactive scenario follows a story and gives the learner specific goals they need to achieve before continuing.
An example of a goal is to get someone's attention and ask for directions to a place that needs to be found. Learners control their own virtual character, in first person, with keyboard and mouse, and see how the virtual people around them react naturally to their presence. Speaking is a simple matter of facing someone, clicking a mouse button and speaking into the computer‘s microphone. Characters recognize what is said, interpret it in the dynamic context of the story and interaction, and respond with a natural-sounding synthetic voice, along with animated nonverbal cues.
Heiti verkefnis: Þjálfun íslensks máls og
menningar í Sýndar-Reykjavík
Enskt heiti: Icelandic Language and Culture Training in
Virtual Reykjavík
Verkefnisstjóri: Hannes Högni Vilhjálmsson, Háskólanum í Reykjavík
Tegund styrks: Verkefnisstyrkur
Styrkár: 2013-2015
Fjárhæð styrks: 20 millj. kr.
Tilvísunarnúmer Rannís: 13070505
The aim of the project was to bridge the gap that exists between learning a language from a book, teacher or even multimedia learning materials, and the real world, where learners need to use the spoken language to accomplish something concrete. The difficulty of going from the relative safety of the traditional learning environment into the uncertain world of unprepared social interaction is a common concern among learners of Icelandic. By providing a simulation of the real world and allowing the learners to practice a number of situations, without being judged, can help with the transition. A pilot study with a focus group of learners confirms the potential of the technology, by demonstrating that it is easy to use, provides relatively convincing voice and behavior and provides help with starting to speak the language. Speech recognition is still not perfect, and mispronunciation by learners can be difficult to handle, however, success with learner speech in other languages, and great progress in Icelandic language technology is an indication this can be improved soon. For those that wish to fully step into the virtual environment, using room-scale VR such as HTC Vive, initial high-end VR prototypes of the system already offer a glimpse into the future of holodeck language learning.
Some highlights of the project: (1) First demonstration of spoken interaction with virtual humans in Icelandic; (2) Almost 150 annotated video recordings of initial exchanges and repairs in Icelandic, which underlie behavior models; (3) Social awareness and character territoriality technology, which makes the virtual humans react dynamically to others, has successfully been adopted by other international research labs; (4) First complete proposal for the Function Markup Language (FML) planning interface, being developed by the international SAIBA multi-modal communicative behavior generation research effort; (5) Initial learner scene completed, but flexible story engine ready for more content.
