avatar Papers

One of the biggest obstacles for constructing effective sociable virtual humans lies in the failure of machines to recognize the desires, feelings and intentions of the human user. Virtual humans lack the ability to fully understand and decode the communication signals human users emit when communicating with each other. This article describes our research in overcoming this problem by developing senses for the virtual humans which enables them to hear and understand human speech,... Read more

An impediment to Web-based retail sales is the impersonal nature of Web-based shopping. A solution to this problem is to use an avatar to deliver product information. An avatar is a graphic representation that can be animated by means of computer technology. Study 1 shows that using an avatar sales agent leads to more satisfaction with the retailer, a more positive attitude toward the product, and a greater purchase intention. Study 2 shows that an attractive... Read more

In this paper we describe a commercial platform for the development of net environments, virtual spaces inhabited by avatars which have been created and are subsequently visited and instructed by users via the Internet. The platform allows extensive data collection. Which data are collected and the scope of analysis will be explained on a theoretical level and by examples from data sets collected from different applications. 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

Avatars play an important role in international online communities. While certain simple expressions, such as facial emotional expressions are cultural independent, more complex expressions might not be. Therefore we conducted a cross-cultural study to investigate the influence of the users’ cultural background (Japanese or Dutch) on their perception of avatar’s expressions in terms of perceived arousal and valence. A significant gender difference was found for valence. Women and in particular Japanese women rated the expressions more... Read more

This is a research of graphical multi-user communication environments. I have studied the interactive behavior of and between humans and chatterbots. First I will describe the emotional and behavioral impacts that a chatterbot can provoke in users as individuals and as members of a group. Sometimes it is not self-evident to recognize who in a chat room is a bot and who is human. This is due to the limits and possibilities of digital interface,... Read more

Reearch into virtual environments on the one hand and artificial intelligence and artificial life on the other has largely been carried out by two different groups of people with different preoccupations and interests, but some convergence is now apparent between the two fields. Applications in which activity independent of the user takes place — involving crowds or other agents — are beginning to be tackled, while synthetic agents, virtual humans and computer pets are all areas... Read more

Although avatars may resemble communicative interface agents, they have for the most part not profited from recent research into autonomous embodied conversational systems. In particular, even though avatars function within conversational environments (for example, chat or games), and even though they often resemble humans (with a head, hands, and a body) they are incapable of representing the kinds of knowledge that humans have about how to use the body during communication. Humans, however, do make... Read more

This paper was presented at The First International Conference on Cyberspace held in May 1990 at the University of Texas at Austin. It was published in Cyberspace: First Steps, Michael Benedikt (ed.), 1991, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Lucasfilm's Habitat was created by Lucasfilm Games, a division of LucasArts Entertainment Company, in association with Quantum Computer Services, Inc. It was one of the first attempts to create a very large scale commercial multi-user virtual environment. The Habitat... Read more