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Animated agents
Agent roles
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Motivational aspects
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Try it!
MSAgents
 

So you want to see how they work, huh?

 

If you are ready to try some of these agents and see what they can do, there are a few things to consider. As has been mentioned in previous sections, there are a number of agents, and a number of ways agents may work (from a CD-Rom, from your Office package, etc.). For the purposes of this demo, we will introduce you to the Microsoft Agent technology, and we will use the WWW as the medium through which the agents will play.

These are the minimum hardware requirements to use the Microsoft agents:

  • Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0 (x86), or Windows 2000
  • Internet Explorer version 3.02 or later
  • A Pentium 100 MHz PC (or faster)
  • At least 16 megabytes (MB) RAM
  • At least 1 MB free disk space for the core components
  • An additional 2 to 4 MB for each character you install
  • An additional 32 KB for each language component (DLL)

In order for you to get started you need to install the following software, that can be downloaded for free from the Microsoft website:

  • MSAgent.exe: this is the main agent engine. It installs on your Windows system and allows for the agents, the voice, etc., to be displayed on your computer. Download the file to your hard drive, and then double-click on it to install it.
    file size: 395 k.
    click here to download
  • tv_enua.exe: this is the voice engine, that allows the agent to speak with a computer-generated voice. This is the English ("en") language, American ("ua") version of the voice engine. You can get different language versions of this engine. Download and double-click to install.
    file size: 1 Mb
    click here to download
  • Genie.exe: this is one of the characters, called Genie. Download and double-click to install.
    file size: 1.6 Mb.
    click here to download
  • Merlin.exe: this is one of the characters, called Merlin the Wizard. Download and double-click to install.
    file size: 1.8 Mb.
    click here to download
  • Peedy.exe: this is another character, called Peedy the Parrot. Download and double-click to install.
    file size: 3.3 Mb.
    click here to download

Once you have this software installed on your system, you can visit the following sites and experience some uses of the Microsoft animated agents. Take your time to go through the different pages of each site, so that you have a chance to see and compare what different developers have done with different agents.

Pear Tree Farm: this is a 17th century farm in the village of Wigmore, England. Merlin is your host, and when you open this page on your browser, Merlin will pop-up and introduce you to the farm, to the website, and he will give you instructions on how to proceed. Make sure to have your speakers connected and turned on.

Kingsbury School online: this is a school where students with disabilities can visit the school website and be aided by animated agents to present information, to read the pages for them, and to provide them guidance and assistance with the different sections.

Isle of Wight: this webpage offers a virtual tour of the Isle of Wight off the sourth coast of England. Both Merlin and Peedy establish a conversation while the visitor goes through the different pages.