Introduction to the special issue on intelligent virtual environments and virtual agents

Avatars are virtual agents or characters that graphically represent users within virtual environments. Avatars can be implemented in three-dimensional (3-D) virtual environments for training purposes. While there are promising findings indicating that avatars can enhance the learning experience, conclusive and generalized evaluations cannot be made at this time. The effectiveness of these virtual agents in a learning context remains an open question. The purpose of this chapter is to present background information on the definitions and use of avatars in e-based, virtual learning environments and to address the applicability of avatars to ubiquitous learning (u-learning). This chapter examines the available empirical research on the effectiveness of avatars in facilitating social interactivity, motivation, and collaborative learning in 3-D environments. Finally, this chapter provides suggestions for future studies on the design of avatars in both e- and u-learning.

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Virtual Reality in Object Location

Latin American Women and Research Contributions to the IT Field - Advances in Human and Social Aspects of Technology ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-7552-9.ch014 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 307-324

Author(s):

Graciela Lara López

Keyword(s):

Virtual Reality ◽

Natural Language ◽

Computational Model ◽

Everyday Life ◽

Virtual Environments ◽

Computer Technology ◽

Object Location ◽

Virtual Agents ◽

Intelligent Virtual Agents

Currently, virtual reality (VR) is a computer technology that is growing in terms of developments and discoveries. Virtual reality has been introduced in different areas due to the growing interest it has caused in people. The development of applications with virtual reality is increasingly varied, covering activities, tasks, or processes of everyday life in the fields of industry, education, medicine, tourism, art, entertainment, design, and modeling of objects, among others. This chapter will focus on describing the latest advances and developments in virtual reality within the scope of representing reality in the process of locating objects. With the support of virtual environments and intelligent virtual agents, the author has managed to develop a computational model that generates indications in natural language, for the location of objects considering spatial and cognitive aspects of the users.

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Introduction to the Special Issue on Dialog with Robots

AI Magazine ◽

10.1609/aimag.v32i4.2375 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 32 (4) ◽

pp. 15-16 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Dan Bohus ◽

Eric Horvitz ◽

Takayuki Kanda ◽

Bilge Mutlu ◽

Antoine Raux

Keyword(s):

Spoken Language ◽

Human Robot Interaction ◽

Virtual Agents ◽

Special Issue ◽

Robot Interaction ◽

Dialog Systems ◽

Core Concepts

This special issue of AI Magazine on dialog with robots brings together a collection of articles on situated dialog. The contributing authors have been working in interrelated fields of human-robot interaction, dialog systems, virtual agents, and other related areas and address core concepts in spoken dialog with embodied robots or agents. Several of the contributors participated in the AAAI Fall Symposium on Dialog with Robots, held in November 2010, and several articles in this issue are extensions of work presented there. Others include invited contributions. The articles in this collection address diverse aspects of dialog with robots, but are unified in addressing opportunities with spoken language interaction, physical embodiment, and enriched representations of context.

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Association of Game Events with Facial Animations of Computer-Controlled Virtual Characters Based on Probabilistic Human Reaction Modeling

Applied Sciences ◽

10.3390/app10165636 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (16) ◽

pp. 5636

Author(s):

Wafaa Alsaggaf ◽

Georgios Tsaramirsis ◽

Norah Al-Malki ◽

Fazal Qudus Khan ◽

Miadah Almasry ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Facial Expression ◽

Virtual Environments ◽

Facial Expressions ◽

Computer Games ◽

Virtual Agents ◽

Board Game ◽

Virtual Character ◽

Virtual Characters ◽

Computer Controlled ◽

Human Player

Computer-controlled virtual characters are essential parts of most virtual environments and especially computer games. Interaction between these virtual agents and human players has a direct impact on the believability of and immersion in the application. The facial animations of these characters are a key part of these interactions. The player expects the elements of the virtual world to act in a similar manner to the real world. For example, in a board game, if the human player wins, he/she would expect the computer-controlled character to be sad. However, the reactions, more specifically, the facial expressions of virtual characters in most games are not linked with the game events. Instead, they have pre-programmed or random behaviors without any understanding of what is really happening in the game. In this paper, we propose a virtual character facial expression probabilistic decision model that will determine when various facial animations should be played. The model was developed by studying the facial expressions of human players while playing a computer videogame that was also developed as part of this research. The model is represented in the form of trees with 15 extracted game events as roots and 10 associated animations of facial expressions with their corresponding probability of occurrence. Results indicated that only 1 out of 15 game events had a probability of producing an unexpected facial expression. It was found that the “win, lose, tie” game events have more dominant associations with the facial expressions than the rest of game events, followed by “surprise” game events that occurred rarely, and finally, the “damage dealing” events.

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On virtual environments and agents in next-generation computer games

The Knowledge Engineering Review ◽

10.1017/s0269888908000040 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 23 (4) ◽

pp. 389-397 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Daniel Torres

Keyword(s):

Virtual Environments ◽

Computer Games ◽

Virtual Agents ◽

Future Trends ◽

Next Generation ◽

Virtual Agent ◽

Game Development ◽

The World ◽

New Generation ◽

Generation Computer

AbstractThis paper holds the material presented at our keynote at the Intelligent Virtual Environments and Virtual Agents Conference, where we analyzed future trends in virtual agent and environment technologies, as applied to the fields of videogames and interactive multimedia. We begin by observing current tendencies in game development projects, both in the market and in the academia, outlining their respective strengths and weaknesses. We follow by describing the aspects of game development that will come to shape the next generation of games, and discuss the requirements for academic projects to achieve the level of quality required to be competitive in this field. In the rest of the paper we analyze the roles, importance, challenges, and research opportunities that a new generation of virtual characters and environments will bring to the world of interactive entertainment.

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Editors’ Note

Journal of Interactive Systems ◽

10.5753/jis.2017.677 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 1

Author(s):

Alberto Raposo ◽

Cléber Corrêa

Keyword(s):

Virtual Reality ◽

Human Factors ◽

Virtual Environments ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

Medical Procedures ◽

Conference Program ◽

Special Issue ◽

Collaborative Virtual Environments ◽

Computing Systems

It is our pleasure to introduce you the second issue of JIS in 2017. This issue contains six papers of the Special Issue of the 15th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (IHC 2016). As we have been doing since IHC 2014, the best papers of the conference are invited to submit extended versions to a special issue of JIS, guest edited by the conference program chairs. In the current publication, our guest editors are Profs. Carla Leitão, from Pontifícia Universidade Católica - Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), and Luciana Salgado, from Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), who we thank a lot for the dedication in the preparation of this issue. We invited you to read their editorial in the following.We also have in this issue an original paper by Paulo Paiva, Liliane Machado, Jauvane de Oliveira, and Ronei de Moraes, entitled “Networking Issues for 3D Medical Collaborative Virtual Environments: Design and Applications”. The authors discuss specific networking issues for Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) applied to the simulation of medical procedures. They designed, developed, and validated a peer-to-peer multicast architecture on the collaborative module of the CyberMed Virtual Reality framework, aiming at providing better network scalability.Finally, we would like to thank the authors and reviewers that contributed to JIS. At the end of the issue we acknowledge the reviewers that contributed to JIS in 2015, 2016, and 2017.JIS Editorial Board is looking forward to receiving your contributions. We hope you enjoy reading this issue!

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