Search for: All records

Cybersecurity competitions are exciting for the game participants; however, the excitement and educational value do not necessarily transfer to audiences because audiences may not be experts in the field. To improve the audiences’ comprehension and engagement levels at these events, we have proposed a virtual commentator architecture for cybersecurity competitions. Based on the architecture, we have developed a virtual animated agent that serves as a commentator in cybersecurity competition. This virtual commentator can interact with audiences with facial expressions and the corresponding hand gestures. The commentator can provide several types of feedback including causal, congratulatory, deleterious, assistive, background, and motivational responses. In addition, when producing speech, the lips, tongue, and jaw provide visual cues that complement auditory cues. The virtual commentator is flexible enough to be employed in the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competitions environment. Our preliminary results demonstrate the architecture can generate phonemes with timestamps and behavioral tags. These timestamps and tags provide solid building blocks for implementing desired responsive behaviors.