Virtual Characters

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Virtual Characters
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Overview

• What is a digital character?
• Why do would we want digital characters?
• Scope of the problem
• What we want to tackle
• How we want to tackle it

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What is a Virtual Character?

• Virtual character - a character who represents an
  executing system
• In TRON (1982), humans and humans that represents
  software interacted within a world that
  represented the hardware.

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What is a Virtual Character

• We look to to have humans and human the represent
  software interact in the real world.
• http//movies.yahoo.com/shop?dhvid1807432839cf
  trailer

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Digital Characters

• A new medium to interact with system information
• Spectrum from the paper clip -gt AIBO
• Examples
• Agents (AI, NLP)
• Robots (Robotics)

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Life-Sized Virtual Characters

• Virtual Characters as a way to interact with
  information
• If virtual characters are presented with an
  adequate level of realism, would people respond
  to them as they would to other people?
• Effective Interaction
• Natural (gt than keyboard and mouse)
• 3D, Dynamic (augmentable)
• Effective Collaboration
• Non-verbal communication (60)
• High impact?

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Comparing Human-Human Interaction Modalities
IM Phone Video Phone Digital Character 3D Tele-Immsn Face to Face
Input Verbal L H H H H H
Input Non-Verbal L N H ? (M) H H
Input Privacy H H L H L L
Output Verbal L H H H H H
Output Non-Verbal L N H ? (M) H H
Output Dynamic? M N N H L/? L
Efficacy Impact L M M ? (H) H H
Efficacy Interaction L L L ? (M) H H
Logistics Bandwidth L L M L H N/A
Logistics Cost L L M M H N H
Logistics Availability H H L N/A L N H
N- None, L Low, M Medium, H High
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Digital Characters

• Advantages
• Input Non-Verbal, privacy
• Output Non-Verbal, dynamic
• Efficacy Impact, interaction
• Logistics Bandwidth, Cost
• Disadvantages
• Input Non-verbal fidelity
• Output Non-verbal fidelity
• Efficacy Interaction fidelity

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Interaction

• Each participant in a communication has three
  stages perception, cognition, and response
• Investigate Display, perception, efficacy

Thinking
Perceiving
Responding
Interaction
Responding
Perceiving
Thinking
Participant
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What we plan on studying

• There are many components in digital characters
• We will focus only on interaction
• Input (perception)
• How can we have the system capture non-verbal
  information? (emotion, gestures, eye-gaze, etc.)
• Proposed solution Initially straps -gt advanced
  computer vision techniques
• Output (response)
• How do we display the digital character?
• Proposed solution Evaluate different display
  technologies
• Eventually we will look at efficacy (future
  research)

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How we plan on studying it

• Perception
• STRAPS Track head, arms, upper body, and objects
  (telephone).
• Develop techniques to transmit eye-gaze and
  expressions
• User Studies Evaluate effectiveness of each
  component
• Response
• Evaluate the display modality. User Studies
• Immersive vs Non-Immersive
• Life-sized vs. Non-life sized
• 2D vs 3D
• Goal TV webcams laptop

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Projects underway

• Interpersonal communication
• Distributed acting rehearsal (DAS student)
• Teaching
• Deaf students
• Future work Universal Access
• Disabled
• Minorities
• Rural communities

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Recruiting

• Work with
• Cognitive Psychologists
• Computer Scientists
• Computational Geometry
• Aesthetic computing
• Simulation/modeling
• Digital Arts and Science

• Looking for
• MS and PhD students
• Equipment
• Wide area 12x12 tracker
• V8 HMD
• 42 plasma TV
• Cyberware Scanner
• 6 data projectors (stereo)
• Firewire cameras
• High-end PCs, video