Empathic tutoring software agents using real-time eye tracking

This paper describes an empathic software agent (ESA) interface using eye movement information to facilitate empathy-relevant reasoning and behavior. Eye movement tracking is used to monitor user's attention and interests, and to personalize the agent behaviors. The system reacts to user eye information in real-time, recording eye gaze and pupil dilation data during the learning process. Based on these measures, the ESA infers the focus of attention and motivational status of the learner and responds accordingly with affective (display of emotion) and instructional behaviors. In addition to describing the design and implementation of empathic software agents, this paper will report on some preliminary usability test results concerning how users respond to the empathic functions that are provided.