The AI Companion for Boomerang - Overview

Boomerang sessions can now include an AI companion: a robot character that is present in the Boomerang world alongside the team. It talks to players with a synthesised voice, can listen to them, and moves around the environment with them. It is designed as a development tool that supports the facilitator, not as a replacement for one.

The AI companion is off by default and is only available for Boomerang sessions. Apollo sessions are not affected.

This product is currently in beta, contact us if you would like a demo

What the companion can do

Speak to the whole team by voice. It always speaks to everyone; there are no private messages.
Listen to players and respond, depending on its communication style (see below).
Move around the environment, point at players and landmarks, gesture, follow players and lead them to named places.
Comment on game events such as blocks being scored, fertiliser use or the pollution alarm.
Join the team's Teams, Zoom or Google Meet call instead of the in-game voice chat, and run a short debrief after each round. See Using the Meeting bot.

The companion cannot pick up or move blocks, operate dispensers or otherwise play the game for the team.

Personas

Each companion you can choose is a persona: a named character with its own personality, voice and way of communicating. Personas are created and maintained by Jenson8. When you set up a session you pick one from a list, and each option shows the persona's name and a one-line description of how it behaves.

If your organisation would like a persona designed for a particular programme, please contact us directly. Personas can be made exclusive to one organisation.

Communication styles

Every persona has one of four communication styles. The list in the dashboard is grouped by style so you can see at a glance how talkative a companion will be.

On request - speaks only when directly addressed. Players address it by starting their sentence with its name, in the same way as a voice assistant. This is the quietest option and a good first choice.
Announcer - makes periodic announcements on a timer and does not join the conversation.
Teammate - hears the whole team and decides for itself when a teammate would speak. It always answers when spoken to, answers group questions when it is confident, and otherwise mostly listens.
Observer - gives gameplay tips on a timer based only on what is happening in the game. It never hears player voice: microphone audio stays on the players' devices. Choose this style where listening to participants is not appropriate.

How much the companion knows

Personas also differ in how well they know the game. Some are accurate coaches who know the real rules. Others are deliberately designed as first-timers, or as confident characters who hold their own mistaken beliefs about how the game works. These personas are never given the correct rules, so they cannot reveal the winning strategy however they are asked.

This is a deliberate development device. A team that follows a confident but mistaken companion has a rich discussion ahead of it about trust, verification and challenge. The persona description in the dashboard tells you which kind of companion you are choosing, and the companion raises the team's trust in it as a reflection point during debriefs.

Languages

The companion understands several languages. It replies in the language of the person it is answering, and if a player asks it to speak a particular language it will do so for that player from then on. When nobody has spoken to it, it uses the main language of the conversation, or English if it has heard nothing yet.