Emmanuel Ayedoun

• Ph.D. (Informatics)
• Professor (Assistant) at Kansai University

Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC) is a technology that optimizes solutions through human-computer interaction based on intuitive human evaluations, and many systems have been proposed. While IEC typically imposes a burden on users due to the repetitive evaluation of solution candidates, there have also been attempts to combine IEC with dai...

In this study, we propose a system that leverages peer learning to enhance exercise motivation by facilitating mutual instruction and feedback between users and conversational agents on exercise performance. The system aims to address the challenge of maintaining motivation for continuous exercise, which is recommended for preventing lifestyle-rela...

As English becomes increasingly important globally, many agent-based conversation practice environments struggle to maintain learner motivation due to a lack of personalized behavior. This study proposes optimizing a conversational agent's non-verbal cues—such as nodding and voice characteristics—through interactive evolutionary computation to enha...

Fostering creativity in programming tasks is a challenging endeavor, especially when working alone. Traditional programming environments often lack support for stimulating creative thinking and idea generation. This paper presents an interactive augmented reality (AR) system that aims to enhance creativity in Internet of Things (IoT) programming ta...

This study investigates the impact of introducing conversational pauses and self-adaptor gestures in robots to enhance human-likeness during English conversation practice. As globalization increases the demand for English proficiency, there is increasing interest in using conversational robots for language practice. However, conventional robots oft...

Serendipitous learning, characterized by the discovery of new insights and unexpected connections, is recognized as a valuable educational experience that stimulates critical thinking and self-regulated learning. While there have been limited efforts to develop serendipity-oriented recommender systems in education, these systems often fall short in...

In an era characterized by rapid social change, the importance of innovation has never been more pronounced. Creativity, with its capacity to spawn fresh and valuable ideas, stands as the driving force behind innovation. A key aspect of fostering creativity is the effective utilization of others’ viewpoints as catalysts for novel insights. In this...

Language learning resources, such as dialogue scenarios, are important for supporting second language (L2) learning by engaging learners in simulated conversations or role-plays. However, there are often barriers to the wider dissemination of these resources, including the lack of a standard format for distributing them, the difficulties of maintai...

This study proposes a system that uses virtual reality to create the illusion of decreased training load through cross-modal effects, which are when two senses, such as sight and hearing, interact and influence one another. The system utilizes a head-mounted display and headphones for auditory and visual sensory presentation while participants enga...

With the explosive growth of online discussions nowadays, fostering interesting and satisfying group discussions for all group members has become challenging. In this work, we particularly seek to address the issue of online group formation where diverse participants with various topic interest levels gather and carry-on open-ended synchronous disc...

In this study, we propose a rhythm correction system for promoting motivation towards exercise. Recently, music-based exercise has been attracting attention as an approach for preventive care. However, some elderly people may experience a large discrepancy between the rhythm of the music and their own movements, which prevents them from enjoying ex...

The emergence of social robots has created new opportunities for them to coexist with humans, but only if they can imitate human-like social behavior. Previous research has examined various robot social cues, such as emotions, gestures, and eye contact. However, an area that has been under-researched is the concept of implicit group norms, which ar...

Computer-based conversational environments have been advocated as a promising approach for providing virtual, yet realistic opportunities for communication practice to second language learners. However, the high authoring costs of such environments continue to prevent their widespread diffusion and adoption. Furthermore, there is a limited set of a...

In second-language communication, emotional feedbacks play a preponderant role in instilling positive emotions and thereby facilitating the production of the target language by second-language learners. In contrast, facial expressions help convey emotion, intent, and sometimes even desired actions more effectively. Additionally, according to the fa...

In this study, we propose a decision-making model that enables a robot to behave socially in groups of people with common interests. Several attempts have been made to develop robots suitable for humans. Robots should act socially in a human-like social manner to help humans live comfortably. However, if robots are completely subservient to humans,...

When communicating with second language learners, empathetic conversational partners that can convey a suitable amount of emotional feedbacks may play a facilitative role in instilling positive emotions and thus catalyze learner’s production of the target language. On the other hand, facial expressions play a preponderant role in communicating emot...

Communication robots such as partner or pet robots are machines that use artificial intelligence to communicate with humans. These robots need to behave naturally and convey a friendly impression to be a healing companion. Human imperfections such as making poor judgements, forgetting, and dropping things are at the heart of our human identity. Hen...

With the explosive growth of online discussions nowadays, fostering interesting and satisfying group discussions for all group members has become challenging. In this work, we particularly seek to address the issue of online group formation where diverse participants with various topic interest levels gather and carry-on open-ended synchronous disc...

People’s affective states when watching sports videos can be related to their physiological responses. This study proposes a method for extracting sports video highlights from viewers’ physiological data using fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic is a multivalued logic, which is similar to human thinking and interpretation, and it has been widely applied to em...

In this study, we evaluate the adaptivity of a mobile robot, controlled by a navigation model, to changes in personal space within dynamic human-robot groups. Several recent attempts have been made to develop robots suitable for human communities. Although human interpersonal space depends on particular contexts and situations, humans occupy their...

This paper proposes a system that uses Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC) to recommend eyeglasses based on user aesthetic preference and suitability. The system presents the user with various eyeglasses, and the user evaluates the design based on aesthetic preference. Then, the system uses an Interactive Genetic Algorithm (IGA) to optimize...

Kansei is a Japanese word that refers to feeling, sensitivity, intuition, among others. In this paper, we propose a system that facilitates the perception of other people’s Kansei to promote daily life awareness. To this end, our approach consists of providing users with the opportunity to visualize other people’s Kansei through observation of emot...

Prior studies have demonstrated that embodied conversational agents, which provide opportunities to simulate realistic daily conversation situations, could be effective in motivating second language learners to communicate in the target language. However, implementing such systems in various situations requires significant knowledge-engineering eff...

This study proposes a computer-based approach to effectively enhance second language learners' willingness to communicate in the target language. To do so, we implemented a conversational agent embedding a dialogue management model based on two conversational strategies (i.e., communication strategies and affective backchannels), serving as scaffol...

This study reports on differences observed among learners’ preferences of two conversational strategies embedded in a dialogue agent dedicated to enhancing their willingness to communicate (WTC) in a second language. We found that the combination of both strategies is, in general, the most preferred by learners. However, perception, as well as effe...

This paper describes an embodied conversational agent enhanced with specific conversational strategies aiming to foster learners’ readiness towards communication in a second language (L2). Willingness to communicate (WTC) in a second language is believed to have a direct and sustained influence on learners’ actual usage frequency of the target lang...

Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in a second language (L2) is believed to have a direct and sustained influence on learners’ actual usage frequency of the targeted language. To help overcome the lack of suitable environments to increase L2 learners WTC, our approach is to implement a WTC model based conversational agent. In this paper, we propose a...

In this paper, we propose an embodied conversational agent based on the willingness to communicate (WTC) model in L2 to help increase WTC in the context of English as a foreign language (EFL) by providing users with various daily conversation contexts. To simulate realistic and efficient conversations, we adopted a semantic approach in the response...

We propose an embodied conversational agent based on the willingness to communicate (WTC) model in L2 to help increase WTC in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) by providing users with various daily conversation contexts. To simulate realistic and efficient conversations, we adopted a semantic approach in the response generation and...