Reference: Rousseau, D. & Hayes-Roth, B. Personality in Synthetic Agents. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, July, 1996.
Abstract: Personality characterizes an individual through a set of psychological traits that influence his or her behavior. Combining visions from psychology, artificial intelligence and theater, we are studying the use of personality by intelligent, automated actors able to improvise their behavior in order to portray characters, and to interact with users in a multimedia environment We show how psychological personality traits can be exploited to produce a performance that is theatrically interesting and believable without being completely predictable. We explain how personality can influence moods and interpersonal relationships. We describe the model of a synthetic actor that takes into account those concepts to choose its behavior in a given context. In order to test our approach, we observe the performance of autonomous actors portraying waiters with different personalities in interaction with user-driven customers in an application called the Cybercaf=E9. A personality-sensitive text animator is used to display the description of the actions performed by the actors.
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