Development of CAI system employing synthesized speech and CG animated agent

This paper proposes a Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) system that teaches how to write Japanese characters. The system has two important features: synthesized speech output with the easy generation of various instructions and a Computer Graphics (CG) animated agent that provides a user-friendly interface. The CAI system has a video display tablet interface. A user traces the pattern of a character using the tablet pen, and his/her tracing is shown simultaneously on the display. When the line that the user draws slips outside the pattern, the system simultaneously outputs synthesized speech to correct the error. Evaluation experiments were performed and we confirmed (i) interactive instructions using synthesized speech are effective, (ii) users prefer to receive instructions via both speech and the CG animated agent. (iii) the synthesized speech well matches the CG animated agent.