6 Glossary

ACL (Agent Communication Language): Inter agents communication language proposed by consortium FIPA. ACL is founded on the formal definition of communicating acts between agents , making it possible to carry out unambiguous interactions.
Actuator: Apparatus, body of an apparatus operating a computer so as to modify its state or its behaviour.
Adaptability: Capacity to adapt. For a system of man-computer interaction, that indicates its capacity to modify its behaviour according to the profile of that which uses it, of the context, of the task.
Agent: An agent is a data-processing, autonomous and active process permanently. It is able to perceive and act on its environment, to communicate and to even move (to migrate).
Belief: The belief characterises what the agent believes true, it thus constitutes the model of the world of the agent.
Bluetooth: It is a short waves radio technology which makes it possible to remove wiring between electronic, computers and telephones units by a short radio link (ten meters ) with low need of energy.
Communication mode: splitted into two types of modes: perceptive mode ( related to the human senses, i.e., visual mode, auditive mode, ) or productive modes (related to the action capabilities of human being, i.e., oral mode, gestural mode).
Communicative act: It is a behaviour intended to be observed by (and thus to change the mental state of at least) another agent that its author. An agent adopts a behaviour of this type to communicate an intention .
Deictic: Designation by pointing.
Dialoguing agent: It is an intelligent agent equipped with capacities of dialogue. In fact a really intelligent agent sees its capacities dialogue to emanate naturally from its intelligence.
Dual coding: Process which, during perception, linguistics or sensitive, carries out the encoding and the at the same time linguistic and sensitive storage of the object of perception.
Gaze tracking: Processes which make it possible to determine the precise position where the gaze of the user is.
Gestures recognition: Very recent processes which make it possible to recognise certain categories of gestures and their mean.
GPS (Global Positioning System): System of localisation per satellite.
Haptic (interfaces): Emergent interfaces of which the tactile screens form parts , based on the tactile or space interactions.
Illocutionary act: Act achieved by producing a succession of signs in a context of social relation, and which consists in expressing an intention (to inform , to request, are examples of illocutionary acts).
Image synthesis: Process able to generate the image of one object using its semantic or visual description (form, size , colour, etc).
Intelligence: See Intelligent agent.
Intelligent agent: The intelligence of an agent results in a behaviour known as intelligent or rational, like the aptitude for the reasoning, the aptitude for the comprehension , the capacity of reaction, autonomy.
Intention: An agent has the intention of a proposal when he wants that this one to be true in the future. Intention maintain thus a strong link with action.
Interworking: Capacities of initially independent and different systems to being able to function in interaction.
Knowledge (of the agent): See Belief.
Locutionary act: Act consisting in producing a succession of signs (phonems, graphems, etc), according to a given language grammar.
Media: Physical device of interaction. There are various types of media: mono-directional in input of the system (keyboard, mouse, tactile screen) or at output (screen, loudspeaker) the and bi-directional ones which are most of the time only the combination of mono-directional medias (telephone, PDA, etc).
Mediator: Intelligent intermediary able to moderate the actions of the interlocutors, to establish the link between them, etc.
Mental attitude: Various mental attitudes are classically modelled within the intelligent agents such knowledge, the desire , the intention, uncertainty
Modality: Structure of information used at the time of a communication (linguistic, textual, graphic, tactile, ). The modalities are more or less directly related to the modes of communication.
Multimedia: Use of several media.
Multimodal: Use of several modes of communication or several modalities.
Multimodal referring: Reference carried out by using several modalities during its production or its perception.
PDA (Personal Digital Assistant): electronic organiser, portable electronic diary, etc.
Perlocutionary act: Act achieved by the fact of stating a succession of signs. "To convince", "to encourage ", "to alarm", "to frighten" are examples of perlocutionary acts. The perlocutionary acts are especially characterised in terms of perlocutionary effects as they appear as effects of illocutionnary acts and are not necessarily accomplished intentionally.
Predicating act: Act allowing to describe properties on the world (such of the relations between the objects).
Propositional act: Act made up of referring and predicating acts.
Prosody: Set of parameters involved in the force and the duration of the phonic units (phonemes) in a vocal signal.
Protocol: Preset sequence of events allowing to guarantee the good course of a communication (communications protocol) of actions (operational protocol).
Rationality: The principles of rationality constitute one of the important aspect of what one regards as characteristic of the intelligence. Rationality is in particular what will push an agent to be acted by selecting in an optimal way the actions which will lead it to its goals.
Referring act: Act allowing to indicate objects, while referring to its mental representation or with the object itself.
Service: Set of functionalities gathered around a total offer intended for the user to facilitate the achievement of a task to him or to return it to him more pleasant: information services, purchase/sale services
Software agent: See Agent.
Tactile screen: Screen equipped with a tactile matrix on which one can indicate an area on the screen using his finger or a pen. The size of this area depends on the number of points of the matrix. However, the allowed precision remains most of the time rather weak.
Talking heads: Computer graphic designed faces, in 3 dimensions whose facial muscles and mouth can be articulated and whose movements can be synchronised with the uttering of a vocal message.
Trait (of word): The trait of a word corresponds to the one of the attributive or characteristic aspect of its mean. Example: the verb "to walk" has several traits: the fact of advancing, with feet, slowly, etc.
Transmodality: That represents the physical switch of a modality to another.
Uncertainty: Characterise the uncertainty of agent on the veracity of a proposal.
Virtual clone: like-human entity represented in 2 or 3 dimensions.
Voice recognition: Signal processing techniques which return a sequence of recognised words.
Voice synthesis: Reproduction of a speech signal which follows a written text.