The Center currently has several major research efforts underway. A brief description of each is provide here. For more complete information regarding any of the projects, please click on the link provided in its brief description.
 

Virtual Teachers and Therapists

The field of research concerned with the development of lifelike computer characters that behave like sensitive and effective teachers, testers, therapists, trainers and tutors is only ten years old, yet the effectiveness of systems already developed portend awesome future benefits to individuals and society. There are literally tens of millions of individuals on this planet who could benefit from individualized assessments and treatments, but it impossible to provide even a fraction of this population with the help they deserve. The vision is to invent virtual teachers and therapists that are imbued with the clinical knowledge and interpersonal behaviors of highly effective practitioners. Achieving this vision requires research breakthrough in spoken dialog, computer vision and character animation technologies, and the integration of these technologies in computer programs that are informed by a significant body of research in psychology and computer science on how to design multimedia programs that optimize clinical outcomes during interaction with virtual humans. My colleagues and I at CSLR are dedicated to activities that will accelerate the realization of this vision. Success will see a world in which effective treatments are accessible to all who need them. My colleagues and I have discussed some of the challenges involved in achieving this vision in Cole et al, 2003. The article by Sarel van Vuuren describes challenges involved in designing and developing technologies and architectures that power these systems. For more information on the Virtual Teachers and Therapists, click here.

Spoken Dialog and Information Retrieval Systems

CSLR is developing a free toolkit to support research and development of programs that incorporate spoken dialog interaction with lifelike computer characters. For more information on the Spoken Dialog Systems, click here.

Technologies, Toolkits and Demos

CSLR is committed to developing resources that support basic and applied research in areas of human language technologies and virtual human systems. This part of the CSLR Web site provides links to resources, demonstrations and videos of work conducted at CSLR. For more information on the Technologies, Toolkits and Demos, click here.

Click here to see Prior Research Projects