51,775 research outputs found
The Social Interaction Experiences of Older People in a 3D Virtual Environment
Virtual worlds offer much potential in supporting social interaction for older adults, particularly as a platform which can provide an interactive and immersive social experience. Yet, there has not been much work carried out to study the use, interaction and behavior of older people in 3D virtual world systems, especially studies which investigate their interactions in a fully functional virtual world. Most focus on issues related to usability such as cognitive difficulties when navigation in a 3D space and we know little about their perceptions and preferences when socializing in a virtual space. In this chapter, we report an experimental study examining the various factors which affected the social experience of older users in virtual worlds. The study involved 38 older participants engaging with a 3D and non-3D virtual grocery store. A mixed method of questionnaire and contextual interview was used for data collection and analysis. Overall, we found that physical presence was a significant predictor of many measures defining the quality of social interaction, yet participants often reported a sense of artificiality in their virtual experience. Interestingly, avatars were not considered directly important for social interaction and instead were only seen as a âplace holderâ to complete the tasks. Two factors contributed to this, the lack of non-verbal communication and the perceived difficulty in embodying physical people with virtual avatars
Towards virtual communities on the Web: Actors and audience
We report about ongoing research in a virtual
reality environment where visitors can interact with
agents that help them to obtain information, to perform
certain transactions and to collaborate with them in order
to get some tasks done. Our environment models a
theatre in our hometown. We discuss attempts to let this
environment evolve into a theatre community where we
do not only have goal-directed visitors, but also visitors
that that are not sure whether they want to buy or just
want information or visitors who just want to look
around. It is shown that we need a multi-user and multiagent
environment to realize our goals. Since our environment
models a theatre it is also interesting to investigate
the roles of performers and audience in this environment.
For that reason we discuss capabilities and personalities of agents. Some notes on the historical development of networked communities are included
Towards Communicating Agents and Avatars in Virtual Worlds
We report about ongoing research in a virtual reality environment where visitors can interact with agents that help them to obtain information, to perform certain transactions and to collaborate with them in order to get some tasks done. In addition, in a multi-user version of the system visitors can chat with each other. Our environment is a laboratory for research and for experiments with users interacting with agents in multimodal ways, referring to visualized information and making use of knowledge possessed by domain agents, but also by agents that represent other visitors of this environment. We discuss standards that are under development for designing such environments. Our environment models a local theatre in our hometown. We discuss our attempts to let this environment evolve into a theatre community where we do not only have goal-directed visitors buying tickets, but also visitors that that are not yet sure whether they want to buy or just want information or visitors who just want to look around, talk with others, etc. It is shown that we need a multi-user and multi-agent environment to realize our goals and that we need to have a unifying framework in order to be able to introduce and maintain different agents and user avatars with different abilities, including intellectual, interaction and animation abilities
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Designing a virtual teacher for non-verbal children with autism: Pedagogical affordances and the influence of teacher voice
The prevalence of children with autism in Asia has been estimated as comparable to that in many other countries (Jeevanandam, 2009; William et al., 2005). Within this group, approximately one-third to one-half of these children will lack functional speech (Mirenda, 2003) and have severe learning difficulties. There have been recent technological developments for teaching children with autism, for example virtual worlds (Bignell, 2008) and socially intelligent agents (Dautenhahn & Werry, 2004). However, there has been relatively little research into the effectiveness of technologically supported approaches to language development for those children who are non-verbal.
The Picture Exchange Communications System (PECS) is an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) approach that has been used with children with little or no speech to develop language and communication skills. In essence the children gradually learn to communicate through exchanging pictures and symbols for desired items or outcomes. There is empirical evidence to support the value of this approach (Preston & Carter, 2009).
This paper considers a technologically supported approach within this area: Computer Assisted Picture Exchange (CAPE). It examines the issue of teacher embodiment and the affordances arising from using an interactive virtual teacher avatar that responds to the child's manipulation of objects and symbols in the physical world. The paper discusses investigations to compare synthetic and natural teacher voices, and to assess their influence on the learning of communication skills by children with autism
Affective interactions between expressive characters
When people meet in virtual worlds they are represented by computer animated characters that lack a variety of expression and can seem stiff and robotic. By comparison human bodies are highly expressive; a casual observation of a group of people mil reveals a large diversity of behavior, different postures, gestures and complex patterns of eye gaze. In order to make computer mediated communication between people more like real face-to-face communication, it is necessary to add an affective dimension. This paper presents Demeanour, an affective semi-autonomous system for the generation of realistic body language in avatars. Users control their avatars that in turn interact autonomously with other avatars to produce expressive behaviour. This allows people to have affectively rich interactions via their avatars
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An Exploratory Study into the Accessibility of a Multi-User Virtual World for Young People with Aphasia
This paper describes an exploratory study into the accessibility of the virtual world Second Life for two young people with aphasia. Aphasia is a communicative disorder most commonly caused by a stroke. It affects both written and spoken language, is frequently accompanied by right-sided paralysis and people with aphasia can experience isolation and social exclusion. Multi-user virtual worlds are a potential source of fun and contact with others, but how accessible are such worlds to those with communication issues?
We report an investigation into the accessibility and potential of Second Life for people with aphasia. This was accomplished through a critique and an empirical study involving two young people: Ann was in her mid twenties and Bob in his early thirties. They were selected because both were comfortable with computer technologies before their strokes and each continues to use them, albeit in a more limited capacity. We discuss implications of the results for people with aphasia interacting with multi-user virtual worlds
Detection of Deception in a Virtual World
This work explores the role of multimodal cues in detection of deception in a virtual world, an online community of World of Warcraft players. Case studies from a five-year ethnography are presented in three categories: small-scale deception in text, deception by avoidance, and large-scale deception in game-external modes. Each case study is analyzed in terms of how the affordances of the medium enabled or hampered deception as well as how the members of the community ultimately detected the deception. The ramifications of deception on the community are discussed, as well as the need for researchers to have a deep community knowledge when attempting to understand the role of deception in a complex society. Finally, recommendations are given for assessment of behavior in virtual worlds and the unique considerations that investigators must give to the rules and procedures of online communities.</jats:p
On the simulation of interactive non-verbal behaviour in virtual humans
Development of virtual humans has focused mainly in two broad areas - conversational agents and computer game characters. Computer game characters have traditionally been action-oriented - focused on the game-play - and conversational agents have been focused on sensible/intelligent conversation. While virtual humans have incorporated some form of non-verbal behaviour, this has been quite limited and more importantly not connected or connected very loosely with the behaviour of a real human interacting with the virtual human - due to a lack of sensor data and no system to respond to that data. The interactional aspect of non-verbal behaviour is highly important in human-human interactions and previous research has demonstrated that people treat media (and therefore virtual humans) as real people, and so interactive non-verbal behaviour is also important in the development of virtual humans. This paper presents the challenges in creating virtual humans that are non-verbally interactive and drawing corollaries with the development history of control systems in robotics presents some approaches to solving these challenges - specifically using behaviour based systems - and shows how an order of magnitude increase in response time of virtual humans in conversation can be obtained and that the development of rapidly responding non-verbal behaviours can start with just a few behaviours with more behaviours added without difficulty later in development
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