ABOUT
Because of the democratization of intelligent digital technologies, the ubiquitous access to
them, and the emergence of new target groups such as the "Generation Z", the user behavior is
changing. This includes the intake, processing, usage, and transfer of knowledge, information,
and data. Examples such as automated journalism, ubiquitous information visualization/Big
Data, and immersive storytelling (e.g. news or VR entertainment) have found their way into
every domain of knowledge transfer. One especially important aspect is the development of
intelligent data-driven approaches that use techniques of data science (DS) and artificial
intelligence (AI) to render complex data analyses intelligible.
The goal of the project consortium DISTEL is to implement a flexibly usable demonstrator
for data-driven, nonlinear storytelling by means of immersive and intelligent technologies.
We are developing two intelligent communication partners (using the real robot Pepper and a
virtual 3D avatar) that realize different complex communication scenarios by using the latest
AI technologies. DISTEL is intended to prove that the combination of immersive and
intelligent technologies can result in new forms of storytelling that have synergistic unique
features for the domains of data science/artificial intelligence, digital storytelling and
human-technology interaction/mixed reality.
Within the field of AI/data science, DISTEL adopts modern procedures of machine
learning/deep learning as well as intelligent dialog modeling to extract relevant information
by using efficient data-science analyses in complex and heterogeneous databases. Based on a
library of narrative story patterns and suitable multimodal interaction techniques, DISTEL
supports the production of immersive storylines that create a provably positive user
experience. The prototype of a smart conversational agent is being developed and validated in
various scenarios that are based on the partners’ demands.