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me

Office

Dr. Patrick Gebhard
DFKI GmbH Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3
D-66123 Saarbrücken
room: +2.10

phone: +49 681 302 3191
fax: +49 681 302 5341

email: patrick(dot)gebhard(at)dfki(dot)de

Private





ICQ: 44434192



email: mail(at)patrick-gebhard(dot)de

Introduction

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From 1992 to 1999 I studied computer science and physics at the Saarland University. Beginning with the year 1997, I was engaged as a student researcher in the REAL project of the Special Collaboration Programme 378 - Resource Adaptive Cognitive Processes (Sonderforschungsbereich "Ressourcenadaptive kognitive Prozesse"). I finished my studies in the year 1999. Since then, I am employed at the DFKI as a researcher for intelligent user interfaces. With the beginning of 2007 I am involved at the chair of Prof. Wahlster as a tutor assistant. In 2007 I finished my doctoral thesis about a computational model of affect that integrates the most common emotional phenomena, which can be observed in humans.

Projects

  • INTAKT (2008-2011).
  • SemProM (2008-2011). Products keep a diary: smart labels give products a memory and support intelligent logistics. Within the IKT-2020 research program of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research the Innovation Alliance Digital Product Memory (DPM) is developing key technologies for the Internet of Things in the cooperative project SemProM.
  • IDEAS4Games (2007). This EU-funded project (ProFIT, EFRE) investigates how current AI research outcomes can be used to improve dialog based computer games with Virtual Characters. We rely on real-time computational models of affect and expressive speech synthesis modules as well as new methods of creating and maintaining interaction and dialog.
  • CoHibit (2005-2007). This DFKI inhouse research project investigates the simulation of communication concepts and strategies by virtual humans that "live" in an edutainment exhibit.
  • VirtualHuman (2003-2006). This BMBF research project investigates concepts and techniques for virtual human characters with human-like communication skills. Virtual humans serve as dialog partners for real humans.
  • Crosstalk (2002-2004). The aim of this DFKI inhouse project is to create an interactive infotainment installation for public spaces using multiple Lifelike Characters.
  • SAFIRA (2000-2002). This EU-funded project aim is the development of a software framework that supports the design real-time affective interactive applications with Lifelike Characters.
  • PRESENCE (1999-2001). This DFKI inhouse project has the objective to investigate the use of affective models to control the general behaviour of a Lifelike Character dialogue system with regard to create a more believeable human-machine communication.

Research Community Activities

Current

Past

  • Member of the ECAI 2008 progam committee
  • Member of the IHCI 2008 progam committee
  • Progam committee member of the Intelligent Virtual AgentS conferences IVA05, IVA06, IVA07, IVA08
  • Member of the tutorial and research workshop on Affective Dialogue Systems ADS 04 organisation committee
  • Organization committee member of Intelligent Virtual Agent conference IVA03

Research Interests

  • Believability of Interactive Virtual Characters, Modelling and Expression of Emotion and Personality, Multimodal Presentation and Interaction, Useability. Check the sections research and publications for more information.

Further Interests

  • Graphic Design, Photography, Roleplaying, Computer Games.
    More at my homepage (German).

Research

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I'm doing research in the areas interactive virtual characters and modeling of affect.

Interaction with Virtual Characters

Making the interaction between humans and virtual characters as natural as possible is hard work. One aspect that draws my intention is the abstract modeling of a dialog between humans and virtual characters. Many approaches in this research area rely on rule-based or plan-based mechanisms. In some cases, such approaches have drawbacks. They might get to complicated due to a huge number of rules or plans, or multiple dependencies, ... A general aim is to keep the dialog (or story) model as lean as possible and reusable.

Together with Michael Kipp and Martin Rumpler, I have investigated the possibilities to model the dialog- and interaction based on Harel's statecharts with the aim to find an easy but powerful approach for the modeling of dialogs.

Also, I am into the investigation of new ways to interact with computers respectively virtual characters. This research is associated to the EMBOTS group.

Modeling of Affect

My vision of a model of affect is that it integrates the most common affect types, which can be observed in human beings. Those are (1) long-term personality, (2) medium-term mood and (3) short-term emotions. In my PhD work I have conceptually designed and implemented the computational model of affect ALMA that integrates these three affect types.

One major challenge is a consistent simulation of interconnections between those affective phenomena in order to achieve a human-like affect management. Besides this, it has to be investigated how affect emerges in humans in general. Relying on a cognitive approach for appraising communicative acts which is used for the elicitation of affect, the proposed computational model of affect is deployed in virtual characters in order to enhance their overall believability.

The real-time computational model ALMA is explicitly designed to be used as a major control mechanism (like affect is for human beings) for virtual characters that influence behavior on various layers, like e.g. the body layer (gestures and posture) or the deliberative layer (cognitive processes, e.g. decision making, selection of communicative strategies, ...).

An implementation of ALMA is freely available for research and educational purposes.

Teaching

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Courses

Supervision

  • Master thesis Modeling and Interpretation of Parallel Processes in Interactive Virtual Characters Environments (working title)
    Student: Gregor Mehlmann, WS 2008/2009 - SS 2009 (ongoing)
  • Bachelor thesis Ontology-based Modeling of Interaction and Dialog Skills for Virtual Characters within the SceneMaker Authoring Toolkit (working title)
    Student: Markus Dräger, WS 2008/2009 (ongoing)
  • Bachelor thesis Interaktion mit Hilfe von Alltagsgegenständen durch visuelle Erkennung (working title)
    Student: Torsten Spieldenner, WS 2008/2009 (ongoing)
  • Bachelor thesis (in collaboration with FH Birkenfeld) 3D-Modellierung eines Virtuellen Bar-Mixers
    Student: Stefan Golhke, WS 2008/2009 (ongoing)
  • Diploma thesis Multispektrale Evaluation des VirtualConstructor-Exponats in der Autostadt
    Student: Susanne Karsten, WS 2008/2009
  • Bachelor thesis Kontrolle von Ablauf und Interaktion in modernem Spiele-Design
    Student: Susanne Becker, WS 2007
  • Diploma thesis SceneMaker - Implementation eines Autorensystems für interaktive Anwendungen mit Virtuellen Charakteren
    Student: Thomas Schleiff, 2005
  • Fopra thesis Bildbasisgenerator - Automatische Generierung von Eingabedateien für den Personaplayer
    Student: Thomas Schleiff, 2003

Publications

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2008

  • Marc Schröder, Patrick Gebhard, Marcela Charfuelan, Christoph Endres, Michael Kipp, Sathish Pammi, Martin Rumpler, and Oytun Türk
    Enhancing Animated Agents in an Instrumented Poker Game. In: Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Künstliche Intelligenz 2008 (KI08), LNAI 5243, Springer, pp. 316-323). 2008.
  • Kipp, M., Gebhard, P.
    IGaze: Studying reactive gaze behavior in semi-immersive human-avatar interactions. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA08), LNAI 5208, Springer, pp. 191-199, 2008.
  • Patrick Gebhard, Marc Schröder, Marcela Charfuelan, Christoph Endres, Michael Kipp, Sathish Pammi, Martin Rumpler, and Oytun Türk
    IDEAS4Games: Building Expressive Virtual Characters for Computer Games (pdf, 2 MB, 14 pages, English)
    In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA'08), LNAI 5208, Springer, pp. 426-440, 2008.

2007

  • Patrick Gebhard
    Emotionalisierung interaktiver Virtueller Charaktere - Ein mehrschichtiges Computermodell zur Erzeugung und Simulation von Gefühlen in Echtzeit, Dissertation, Lehrstuhl Prof. Wahlster, Saarland University, 2007
  • Martin Klesen and Patrick Gebhard
    Affective Multimodal Control of Virtual Characters
    In: International Journal of Virtual Reality 6(4):43-53, 2007

2006

2005

  • Alassane Ndiaye, Patrick Gebhard, Michael Kipp, Martin Klesen, Michael Schneider, Wolfgang Wahlster
    Ambient Intelligence in Edutainment: Tangible Interaction with Life-Like Exhibit Guides
    In: Proc. of the Conference on INtelligent TEchnologies for interactive enterTAINment (INTETAIN'05), Madonna di Campiglio, Italy, November 30 - December 02, 2005.
  • Patrick Gebhard
    ALMA - A Layered Model of Affect (pdf, 761 KB, 8 pages, English)
    In: Proceedings of the Fourth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS'05), 29-36, Utrecht, 2005.

Before

  • Yasmine Arafa, Luis Botelho, Adrian Bullock, Pedro Figueiredo, Patrick Gebhard, Kristina Höök, Abe Mamdani, Ana Paiva, Paolo Petta, Phoebe Sengers, Marco Vala
    Affective Interactions for in Real-time Applications: the SAFIRA Project
    In: Special issue of KI-Journal: Embodied Conversational Agents, KI 1/04, 2004.
  • Thomas Rist, Elisabeth André, Stephan Baldes, Patrick Gebhard, Martin Klesen, Michael Kipp, Peter Rist, Markus Schmitt
    A Review on the Development of Embodied Presentation Agents and their Application Fields
    In: Life-like Characters. Tools, Affective Functions and Applications, Cognitive Technologies Series, Springer-Verlag, 2003.
  • Patrick Gebhard, Michael Kipp, Martin Klesen, Thomas Rist
    Authoring Scenes for Adaptive, Interactive Performances (pdf, 390 KB, 7 pages, English)
    In: Proceedings of the Second International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS'03), Melburne, 2003.
  • Stephan Baldes, Patrick Gebhard, Michael Kipp, Martin Klesen, Peter Rist, Thomas Rist, Markus Schmitt
    The Interactive CrossTalk Installation: Meta-Theater with Animated Presentation Agents (pdf, 1.15 MB, 7 pages, English)
    In: Proc. of the International Workshop on Lifelike Animated Agents - Tools, Affective Functions, and Applications, held in conjunction with the Seventh Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI'02), Tokyo, 2002.
  • Elisabeth André, Martin Klesen, Patrick Gebhard, Steve Allen, and Thomas Rist
    Integrating Models of Personality and Emotions into Lifelike Characters (pdf, 2057 KB, 15 pages, English)
    In: A. Paiva and C. Martinho (eds.), Proceedings of the workshop on Affect in Interactions - Towards a new Generation of Interfaces in conjunction with the 3rd i3 Annual Conference, pp. 136-149, Siena, Italy, October 1999.

Slides

  • Lecture section Animierte Agenten und ihre Anwendung of the information and project engineering course at BA-Mannheim, November 2001 (zip(pdf), 7856 KB, 69 pages, German)
    Addon: An example how to integrate ms agents characters on html pages (5 KB, needs ieplorer 5.x, javasctipt 6.0, msagent technology)

Talks and Videos

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  • Video presenting concepts, technology, and a poker demonstrator employing Emotional Virtual Characters which have been realized by the IDEAS4Games project, 2008 (mp4, 77 MB, 2:18 min, German with English subtitles)
Last change 10.3.2009