Exploring the Effects of the Virtual Human with Physicality on Co-presence and Emotional Response

Abstract

With continued technology innovation in the fields of computer graphics (CG) and virtual reality (VR), digital animated avatars (or virtual humans) are evolving into ones that are more interactive at a suitable location such as museum, airport, and shopping mall. Specially, the form of the avatar (or the virtual human) realistically need to be expressed in a way that matches the users' physical space. In recent many researches, the form of virtual human has been expressed as mixed-reality human (MRH)-the virtual human combines with the physicality as the real part. In this paper, we propose to carry out a study comparing various MRH on co-presence and emotional response in two-typed virtual humans depending on how many actual parts are included: (1) (Level 1) small parts in the virtual human combined virtual components (e.g., the head only) and (2) (Level 2) large parts in the virtual human with the physicality as the real part such as head, arms, and upper body). We report on the implemented results of our virtual humans and experimental results on co-presence and emotional response.

Fig. 1. Real-virtual configuration: Upper body to make parts of a virtual human (left), the virtual human to create head only (right)

Fig. 2. Results by the difference between real-virtual configuration: Level 2 (left), Level 1 (right)

Fig. 3. Eyeball movement of the virtual human

Fig. 4. Gaze control of the virtual human:front, left, and right direction

Fig. 5. LipSync control

Fig. 6. Control UI of the virtual human by the Wizard-of-Oz method

Fig. 7. Effects of two-typed virtual human’s configurations on co-presence and emotional response

Table 1. Examples of questions in our experiment

Table 2. Subject questionnaire