Papers about Agent's Appearance

This paper presents a quest for the most suitable setting and method to assess the naturalness of the output of an existing algorithm for the generation of multimodal referring expressions. For the evaluation of this algorithm a setting in Second Life was built. This paper reports on a pilot study that aimed to assess (1) the suitability of the setting and (2) the design of our evaluation method. Results show that subjects are able to... Read more

Gunslinger is an interactive-entertainment application of virtual humans that transforms an iconic Wild West movie scene into a vivid semblance of reality. The project combines virtual humans technology with Hollywood storytelling and set building into an engaging, mixed-reality, story-driven experience, where a single participant can interact verbally and non-verbally with multiple virtual characters that are imbedded in a real, physical saloon. The Gunslinger project pushes the frontier of virtual humans research by combining question-answering dialogue... Read more

Researchers demand much from their embodied conversational agents (ECAs), requiring them to be both life-like, as well as responsive to events in an interactive setting. We find that a flexible combination of animation approaches may be needed to satisfy these needs. In this paper we present SmartBody, an open source modular framework for animating ECAs in real time, based on the notion of hierarchically connected animation controllers. Controllers in SmartBody can employ arbitrary animation algorithms... Read more

This paper describes the Evolutionary Virtual Agent (EVA) prototype designed as an interactive entertainment system for a multimedia exhibition. This implementation uses a behavioral engine based on a dynamical subsumption architecture and a 3D animated interface that has been projected onto a physical model. Read more

Virtual humans offer an exciting and powerful potential for rich interactive experiences. Fully embodied virtual humans are growing in capability, ease, and utility. As a result, they present an opportunity for expanding research into burgeoning virtual patient medical applications. In this paper we consider the ways in which one may go about building and applying virtual human technology to the virtual patient domain. Specifically we aim to show that virtual human technology may be used... Read more

During the last decade research groups as well as a number of commercial software developers have started to deploy embodied conversational characters in the user interface especially in those application areas where a close emulation of multimodal human-human communication is needed. Incarnations of such characters differ widely in type and amount of embodiment - starting from simplistic cartoon-style 2D representations of faces, fully embodied virtual humans in 3D virtual worlds to physically embodied androids co-habiting... Read more

In this paper, we describe a framework for similarity based retrieval and clustering from a 3D human database. Our technique is based on both body and head shape representation and the retrieval is based on similarity of both of them. The 3D human database used in our study is the CAESAR anthropometric database which contains approximately 5000 bodies. We have developed a webbased interface for specifying the queries to interact with the retrieval system. Our... Read more

At most institutions, medical students learn communication skills through the use of standardized patients (SP’s). Virtual patients (VP’s) may offer several advantages over SP’s, but little data exists regarding the use of VP’s in teaching communication skills. Therefore, we report our initial efforts to create an interactive virtual clinical scenario of a patient with acute abdominal pain to teach medical students history-taking and communication skills. Read more

It has become increasingly common for websites and computer media to provide computer generated visual images, called avatars, to represent users and bots during online interactions. In this study "The Influence of the Avatar on Online Perceptions of Anthropomorphism, Androgyny, Credibility, Homophily, and Attraction ", participants (N=255) evaluated a series of avatars in a static context in terms of their androgyny, anthropomorphism, credibility, homophily, attraction, and the likelihood they would choose them during an interaction.... Read more

In my research, I evolve intelligent locomotive strategies in a population of embodied virtual agents. The virtual environment utilizes a physics engine to model real world dynamics. Previous work in this field include the virtual creatures evolved by Karl Sims (1994). This brief paper provides an overview of the results obtained during the research phase of my thesis. Read more