Sto(ry)chastics : a Bayesian network architecture for combined user modeling, sensor fusion, and computational storytelling for interactive spaces

This thesis presents a mathematical framework for real-time sensor-driven stochastic modeling of story and user-story interaction, which I call sto(ry)chastics. Almost all sensor-driven interactive entertainment, art, and architecture installations today rely on one-to-one mappings between content and participant's actions to tell a story. These mappings chain small subsets of scripted content, and do not attempt to understand the public's intention or desires during interaction, and therefore are rigid, ad hoc, prone to error, and lack depth in communication of meaning and expressive power. Sto(ry)chastics uses graphical probabilistic modeling of story fragments and participant input, gathered from sensors, to tell a story to the user, as a function of people's estimated intentions and desires during interaction. Using a Bayesian network approach for combined modeling of users, sensors, and story, sto(ry)chastics, as opposed to traditional systems based on one- to-one mappings, is flexible, reconfigurable, adaptive, context-sensitive, robust, accessible, and able to explain its choices. To illustrate sto(ry)chastics, this thesis describes the museum wearable, which orchestrates an audiovisual narration as a function of the visitor's interests and physical path in the museum. The museum wearable is a lightweight and small computer that people carry inside a shoulder pack. It offers an audiovisual augmentation of the surrounding environment using a small eye-piece display attached to conventional headphones. The wearable prototype described in this document relies on a custom-designed

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Program in Media Arts and Sciences.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Author dc:creator

• Sparacino, Flavia, 1965-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kent Larson and Glorianna Davenport.

• Architecture. Program in Media Arts and Sciences.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/17614

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/17614