This lecture provides an overview of techniques to build conversational digital characters.
Learning objective
This lecture provides an overview of techniques to build conversational digital characters. Three main components of conversational digital characters are introduced: Chatbots, animation synthesis, and speech synthesis. Real-life application of such digital characters is demonstrated on different use cases (e.g., digital Einstein).
Content
This lecture opens with basics on digital characters. Afterwards, the main components to build a conversational digital character are introduced. This includes the basics of natural language processing used to build a chatbot, animating a digital character based on motion capturing and deep learning, and synthesizing the speech. Further, autonomous agents based on knowledge graphs are covered. The lecture ends with real-life applications of digital characters.
Literature
Lecture slides will be made available at the course website.
Prerequisites / Notice
There are no prerequisites for this class. However, it will help if the student has taken an undergraduate or graduate level class in statistics or machine learning.
Competencies
Subject-specific Competencies
Concepts and Theories
assessed
Techniques and Technologies
assessed
Performance assessment
Performance assessment information (valid until the course unit is held again)
Performance assessment as a semester course