PAVAL: Position-Aware Virtual Agent Locomotion for Assisted Virtual Reality Navigation

Ye, Zi-Ming; Chen, Jun-Long; Wang, Miao; Yang, Yongliang

doi:10.1109/ismar52148.2021.00039

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Designing anthropomorphic IVAs to communicate with users using both verbal and non-verbal cues in VR and AR has gained much attention (Holz et al, 2011;Norouzi et al, 2019;Norouzi et al, 2020). Visual embodiment and social behaviors like the agent's gesture and locomotion could improve perceived social presence in both AR (Kim et al, 2018) and VR (Ye et al, 2021). Li et al (2018) investigated how embodiment and postures influence human-agent interaction in Mixed Reality (MR), in which they found people treated virtual humans similar to real persons.…”

Section: Multimodal Communication Of Embodied Intelligent Virtual Age...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of virtual agents’ multimodal communication on brain activity and cognitive load in Virtual Reality

Chang¹,

Bai²,

Zhang³

et al. 2022

Front. Virtual Real.

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Related research has shown that collaborating with Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) embodied in Augmented Reality (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR) can improve task performance and reduce task load. Human cognition and behaviors are controlled by brain activities, which can be captured and reflected by Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. However, little research has been done to understand users’ cognition and behaviors using EEG while interacting with IVAs embodied in AR and VR environments. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the virtual agent’s multimodal communication in VR on users’ EEG signals as measured by alpha band power. We develop a desert survival game where the participants make decisions collaboratively with the virtual agent in VR. We evaluate three different communication methods based on a within-subject pilot study: 1) a Voice-only Agent, 2) an Embodied Agent with speech and gaze, and 3) a Gestural Agent with a gesture pointing at the object while talking about it. No significant difference was found in the EEG alpha band power. However, the alpha band ERD/ERS calculated around the moment when the virtual agent started speaking indicated providing a virtual body for the sudden speech could avoid the abrupt attentional demand when the agent started speaking. Moreover, a sudden gesture coupled with the speech induced more attentional demands, even though the speech was matched with the virtual body. This work is the first to explore the impact of IVAs’ interaction methods in VR on users’ brain activity, and our findings contribute to the IVAs interaction design.

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Section: Multimodal Communication Of Embodied Intelligent Virtual Age...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of virtual agents’ multimodal communication on brain activity and cognitive load in Virtual Reality

Chang¹,

Bai²,

Zhang³

et al. 2022

Front. Virtual Real.

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show abstract

“…Nevertheless, using strictly predefined tours (Ibanez et al, 2003b;Chrastil and Warren, 2013;Liszio and Masuch, 2016) is still common. In addition to taking the full responsibility for wayfinding, VAs can also function as companions, as exemplified by Ye et al (2021), while maintaining a "location-based sense of contextuality" (Ibanez et al, 2003b) when following the user through the IVE. This context awareness enhances user-agent interactions by tailoring shared knowledge and actions accordingly.…”

Section: Characteristicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One possible design of this hybrid role is given in Section 3.2. Here, we also incorporate socially compliant behavior (van der Heiden et al, 2020) for the VA, considering interpersonal distance preferences, ensuring that the VA approaches users at an appropriate distance and adapts its trajectories to user needs, as suggested by Jan et al (2009) and Ye et al (2021).…”

Section: Characteristicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To this end, the position-aware virtual agent locomotion technique (PAVAL) (Ye et al, 2021) was used as baseline. After a pre-study by Ye et al to determine the subjective optimal positioning of a guide in front of a POI based on different user-to-POI distances, PAVAL provides an energy function, optimizing the agents' position and orientation for arbitrary user-to-POI distances, ensuring a good balance between timely position adaptions based on user movements and the avoidance of unnecessary shifts.…”

Section: Positioningmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Wayfinding in immersive virtual environments as social activity supported by virtual agents

Bönsch,

Ehret,

Rupp

et al. 2024

Front. Virtual Real.

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Effective navigation and interaction within immersive virtual environments (IVEs) rely on thorough scene exploration. Therefore, wayfinding is essential, assisting users in comprehending their surroundings, planning routes, and making informed decisions. Based on real-life observations, wayfinding is, thereby, not only a cognitive process but also a social activity profoundly influenced by the presence and behaviors of others. In virtual environments, these “others” are virtual agents (VAs), defined as anthropomorphic computer-controlled characters, who enliven the environment and can serve as background characters or direct interaction partners. However, less research has been conducted to explore how to efficiently use VAs as social wayfinding support. In this paper, we aim to assess and contrast user experience, user comfort, and acquisition of scene knowledge through a between-subjects study involving n = 60 participants across three distinct wayfinding conditions in one slightly populated urban environment: (i) unsupported wayfinding, (ii) strong social wayfinding using a virtual supporter who incorporates guiding and accompanying elements while directly impacting the participants’ wayfinding decisions, and (iii) weak social wayfinding using flows of VAs that subtly influence the participants’ wayfinding decisions by their locomotion behavior. Our work is the first to compare the impact of VAs’ behavior in virtual reality on users’ scene exploration, including spatial awareness, scene comprehension, and comfort. The results show the general utility of social wayfinding support, while underscoring the superiority of the strong type. Nevertheless, further exploration of weak social wayfinding as a promising technique is needed. Thus, our work contributes to the enhancement of VAs as advanced user interfaces, increasing user acceptance and usability.

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“…One of the requirements [10] to allow for an efficient means of reviewing football matches within VR requires the ability to recreate believable virtual agent behaviours due to the characteristics linked to the rich animations required for the visualisation of virtual football players. To this effect, we used AI-based motion retargetting algorithms from [11] and [12] as the basis for our extension of the football actions available to be replayed through our own animation controller within the context of football matches [13].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-enacting Football Matches in VR using Virtual Agents’ Realistic Behaviours

Alarab

Lloyd-Buckingham

et al. 2022

2022 IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality (AIVR)

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Football (or Soccer) 1 matches are often analysed from 2D video footage that lacks any spatial details of the players on the pitch. On the other hand, the real-time positions of the players derived from recorded tracking data are not easily understandable without an immersive and effective visualisation of the players located on a pitch with the ability of the system to review actions over a timeline. To address some of these drawbacks, we propose a novel "Believable Agent Behaviour" (BAB) engine, based on virtual reality equipped with artificial intelligence for the generation of realistic virtual agent animations to enact the data-driven events from football matches. This system implements an immersive, interactive, believable, and automated end-to-end simulation to analyse and replay a football match using immersive 3D graphics.

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PAVAL: Position-Aware Virtual Agent Locomotion for Assisted Virtual Reality Navigation

Cited by 9 publications

References 38 publications

The impact of virtual agents’ multimodal communication on brain activity and cognitive load in Virtual Reality

The impact of virtual agents’ multimodal communication on brain activity and cognitive load in Virtual Reality

Wayfinding in immersive virtual environments as social activity supported by virtual agents

Re-enacting Football Matches in VR using Virtual Agents’ Realistic Behaviours

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