Developing Embodied Conversational Agents in the Unreal Engine: The FANTASIA Plugin

ABSTRACTThe fast-evolving industry of games pushes the technology behind audio, graphics and controllers to evolve at a very high speed. The front-end of interactive experiences such as games sets standards that must be met also by research teams working on Artificial Intelligence. It is, therefore, important, to devise strategies to let researchers concentrate on interaction models while being up to date with interface design standards. FANTASIA is designed to extend the functionalities offered by a high-profile industrial game engine, the Unreal Engine, to obtain an advanced development environment to develop Embodied Conversational Agents. The FANTASIA plugin is open source and is freely available on GitHub https://github.com/antori82/FANTASIA together with tutorial series on a dedicated Youtube channel.