This book will cover theoretical and practical applications of socially engaging interactive systems either as virtual agents, or chatbots (intended as conversational voice interfaces), or robots physically occupying user's space. Theoretical determinants affecting user's intentions to use and accepts such systems will be considered such as user's social influence, accomplishments of important user's goals, hedonic motivations (the fun or pleasure of using a technology), price values (a trade-off between perceived benefits and monetary costs), and users' habits. In addition to these theoretical formulations, since the proposed interactive systems are increasingly more complex, showing humanoid and human appearance, the book is aiming to collect systematic investigations devoted to assessing the role of virtual agents, chatbots, and robotic features exploiting users' domain specific preferences in the context of healthcare and particularly in the context of applications devoted to easing and making independent the life of seniors living alone and vulnerable persons. Studies on virtual agent's acceptance, engagements in interaction and preferences in specific appearances such as human-like agents over machine- or animal-like ones will be reported, as well as the psychological effects that engage vulnerable people in emotionally believable interactions keeping off loneliness, sustaining health status, enhancing quality of life and simplifying access to future telecare services. Studies devoted to the testing how these interactive systems are accepted by a large population of users including young children, and adolescents, other than young, middle aged adults and seniors will be also considered.

Autorentext

Anna Esposito received her "Laurea Degree" summa cum laude in Information Technology and Computer Science from University of Salerno in 1989 with a thesis on: The Behaviour and Learning of a Deterministic Neural Net (published on Complex System, vol 6(6), 507-517, 1992). She received her PhD Degree in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from University of Napoli "Federico II" in 1995. She has been Post Doc at the International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies (IIASS), Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics at the University of Salerno (Italy), and Research Professor (2000-2002) at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Wright State University (WSU), Dayton, OH, USA. Anna is currently Full Professor in Artificial Intelligence and Multimodal Communication at the Department of Psychology of the University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli".

Antonietta Maria Esposito was born and educated in Italy. She got the "Laurea" Degree from the University of Salerno (Italy) in 2001 with a thesis was on the processing of speech signals. From Nov 2001 to Nov 2003, she joined the master's degree in "Advanced Technologies for Information Processing and Communication" (held at the International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies - IIASS) supported by a two years fellowship by the "Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca (MIUR)" and graduated summa cum Laude in Nov 2003. From November 2003 to April 2005 her research activity was on speech recognition in the context of a research contract with the CIRTE S.p.A. (an ALCATEL telecommunication company in Salerno) and jointly on the analysis of seismic signals in the Department of Physics at Salerno University and the IIASS. Antonietta research interests are on seismic signal processing, speech, nonverbal communication features, neural networks, and mining of large amount of data with intelligent learning algorithms. She is author of 80+ contributes to peer reviewed journals, books, and conferences and co-editors of 3 international book

Antonio Perna graduated with honors from the IUO (Istituto Universitario Orientale) of Naples with a master's degree in foreign languages. His thesis, 'Connections and Disconnections,' examined the discriminatory effects of asymmetric access to the Internet and the digital divide. With specializations in cybersecurity (funded by a Ministry of Economy scholarship), networking, and programming languages, Antonio furthered his interdisciplinary training with a Master's in Local Development (supported by a Ministry of Development scholarship). This program deepened his understanding of the tools and strategies needed to design and implement sustainable and inclusive projects that respect local identities and communities, with a focus on incorporating a broad range of stakeholders.

Lakhmi C. Jain, Ph.D., Dr. H.C.,M.E., B.E.(Hons) Fellow (Engineers Australia) is with the University of Piraeus and University of Arad, He was formerly with the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, University of Canberra, Australia, Brighton University, UK and Liverpool Hope University, UK. Professor Jain founded the KES International for providing a professional community, opportunities for publications, knowledge exchange, cooperation, and teaming. Involving around 5,000 researchers drawn from universities and companies world-wide, KES facilitates international cooperation and generate synergy in teaching and research. KES regularly provides networking opportunities for professional community through one of the largest conferences of its kind in KES. His interests focus on the artificial intelligence paradigms and their applications in complex systems, security, e-education, e-healthcare, unmanned air vehicles, and intelligent agents.