demonstrating and testing the bml compliance of bml realizers
DESCRIPTION
Demonstrating and Testing the BML Compliance of BML Realizers. Herwin van Welbergen, Yuyu Xu , Marcus Thiebaux, Wei-Wen Feng, Jingqiao Fu, Dennis Reidsma, Ari Shapiro. What is this talk about. Testing the adherence to the BML standard by realizers - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Demonstrating and Testing the BML Compliance of BML
RealizersHerwin van Welbergen, Yuyu Xu, Marcus Thiebaux, Wei-Wen Feng,
Jingqiao Fu, Dennis Reidsma, Ari Shapiro
Testing the adherence to the BML standard by realizers
(and, by this, also testing for weaknesses in the standard)
Better software engineering practices for virtual humans◦ Daily automated testing (regression, acceptance,
…)
What is this talk about
BML Realizer Interface:SAIBA Framework
BML Realizer Interface: BML goes in
bml1 starts (globaltime=10) gaze1 starts (localtime=0) gaze1 ready (localtime=1) speech1 start (localtime=1) … speech1 end (locatime=10) bml1 ends (globaltime=20)
BML Realizer Interface: Feedback comes out
BML Realizers are complex software components
They form the backbone of virtual human applications by research groups
Yet their testing has so far been limited to time consuming manual inspection of the execution of BML scripts
Why automatic testing of realizers?
Automatic tests are automatic◦ No wasted developer time
Automatic tests can be run often◦ Early error detection
Why automatic testing of realizers?
A realizer provides standardized interface◦ BML goes in◦ Feedback comes out
Several realizers implement this interface We can make automatic tests for this
interface These tests can be used for all realizers
implementing the interface
How can we test a realizer?
Message flow and behavior execution Adherence to time constraints Error handling Acceptance testing
What can be tested?
Send BML to a realizer, capture all feedback Wait until the realizer has executed the BML Verify assertions on the received feedback
Typical test case
<bml id="bml1"><speech id="speech1" start="6"><text>Hey punk <sync id="s1" />what do ya want?</text></speech><head id="nod1" action="ROTATION" rotation="X" start="speech1:s1"/>
</bml>
What can we assert about the expected feedback?- All default sync points remain in order for all behaviors- The head nod will start within |ε| seconds of the start of “what”- Speech1 starts within |ε| seconds of t=6- There will be no exceptions or warnings- The block will end
……
Example test case
<bml id="bml1"><speech id="speech1" start="6"><text>Hey punk <sync id="s1" />what do ya want?</text></speech><head id="nod1" action="ROTATION" rotation="X" start="speech1:s1"/>
</bml>
@Test public void testSpeechNodTimedToSync() {realizerPort.performBML(readTestFile("testspeech_nodtimedtosync.xml"));waitForBMLEndFeedback("bml1");assertSyncsInOrder("bml1", "speech1", "start", "ready", "stroke_start", "stroke", "s1", "stroke_end", "relax", "end");assertAllBMLSyncsInBMLOrder("bml1", "nod1");assertBlockStartAndStopFeedbacks("bml1");assertRelativeSyncTime("bml1", "speech1", "start", 6);assertLinkedSyncs("bml1", "speech1", "s1", "bml1", "nod1", "start");assertNoExceptions();assertNoWarnings();
}
Example test case
A generic testing framework that can test all BML Realizers
Provides a set of tests + assertions And functionality to easily author new tests
◦ Utility methods (e.g. waitForBMLEndFeedback)◦ Custom assertions (e.g. assertLinkedSyncs)
Code and tests released on SF, together with a nice set of example movies to showcase various realizers
RealizerTester
Using RealizerTester◦ Additional tests for Elckerlyc specific functionality◦ Regression testing◦ Acceptance testing
Running all tests takes some time (~3 min.)◦ This might discourage frequent testing by
developers◦ => Run tests automatically on a continuous
integration server Notify developers that commit a build that fails tests Keep track of test result history
Testing Elckerlyc
RealizerTester does not help in identifying the exact location of errors◦ It tests a Realizer as a black box◦ Elckerlyc uses additional white box testing at a
smaller granularity to identify the exact location of errors >1000 unit + mid range tests, running in <10s RealizerTester helps in identifying locations that
require more unit testing Regular visual inspection is still valuable!
Testing Elckerlyc
Visual regression testing◦ Record a baseline◦ Does it (approximately) look
like the baseline?◦ Automatically check
difference with baseline◦ If different
Bug: fix New functionality: create new
baseline
Testing in SmartBody
Testing in SmartBody: example
Visual regression testing:◦ checks whether the correct motion is generated
rather than whether the correct signals are sent◦ is Realizer and character dependent◦ does not provide acceptance testing
RealizerTester is complementary to visual regression testing
Testing in SmartBody
Dealing with BML versions Took 1 day to implement Found some unclarities in BML (e.g.
feedback ordering) now addressed in 1.0 Found some minor implementation issues in
SmartBody Did not find any interpretation differences in
the constraint satisfaction
Testing SmartBody using RealizerTester
Observations: au 1
Observations: gaze
Observations: longer performance
Designing test cases + assertions◦ Highlighted several cases in which the current BML
specification lacked detail or was unclear Setting up a video corpus
◦ Highlighted some expressivity issues in the BML standard
◦ Shows that several behaviors are executed in a semantically equivalent manner
◦ Created a healthy competition between the developers
◦ Motivated developers to move to better BML compliance
Observations
The modularity proposed by SAIBA enables the reuse of testing functionality
Designing a generic testing framework and a shared video repository helps move the standard forward
BMLRealizerTester provides a starting point for a BML compliance test suite
Conclusions
XML format to author tests using BML and assertions expressed?
Add more realizers (PLEASE CONTACT US!)◦ Full BML compliance is not required◦ Support for feedback is required
Include newest version of BML standard discussed last Wednesday
Continue extending our repository of nice example movies
Further work