FurChat: An Embodied Conversational Agent using LLMs, Combining Open and Closed-Domain Dialogue with Facial Expressions
Neeraj Cherakara, Finny Varghese, Sheena Shabana, Nivan Nelson, Abhiram Karukayil, Rohith Kulothungan, Mohammed Afil Farhan, Birthe Nesset, Meriam Moujahid, Tanvi Dinkar, Verena Rieser, Oliver Lemon
Abstract
We demonstrate an embodied conversational agent that can function as a receptionist and generate a mixture of open and closed-domain dialogue along with facial expressions, by using a large language model (LLM) to develop an engaging conversation. We deployed the system onto a Furhat robot, which is highly expressive and capable of using both verbal and nonverbal cues during interaction. The system was designed specifically for the National Robotarium to interact with visitors through natural conversations, providing them with information about the facilities, research, news, upcoming events, etc. The system utilises the state-of-the-art GPT-3.5 model to generate such information along with domain-general conversations and facial expressions based on prompt engineering.- Anthology ID:
- 2023.sigdial-1.55
- Volume:
- Proceedings of the 24th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue
- Month:
- September
- Year:
- 2023
- Address:
- Prague, Czechia
- Editors:
- Svetlana Stoyanchev, Shafiq Joty, David Schlangen, Ondrej Dusek, Casey Kennington, Malihe Alikhani
- Venue:
- SIGDIAL
- SIG:
- SIGDIAL
- Publisher:
- Association for Computational Linguistics
- Note:
- Pages:
- 588–592
- Language:
- URL:
- https://aclanthology.org/2023.sigdial-1.55
- DOI:
- 10.18653/v1/2023.sigdial-1.55
- Cite (ACL):
- Neeraj Cherakara, Finny Varghese, Sheena Shabana, Nivan Nelson, Abhiram Karukayil, Rohith Kulothungan, Mohammed Afil Farhan, Birthe Nesset, Meriam Moujahid, Tanvi Dinkar, Verena Rieser, and Oliver Lemon. 2023. FurChat: An Embodied Conversational Agent using LLMs, Combining Open and Closed-Domain Dialogue with Facial Expressions. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue, pages 588–592, Prague, Czechia. Association for Computational Linguistics.
- Cite (Informal):
- FurChat: An Embodied Conversational Agent using LLMs, Combining Open and Closed-Domain Dialogue with Facial Expressions (Cherakara et al., SIGDIAL 2023)
- PDF:
- https://preview.aclanthology.org/corrections-2024-07/2023.sigdial-1.55.pdf