Non-Verbal Communication in Collaborative Virtual Environments
Expressive Agents: Non-verbal Communication in Collaborative Virtual Environments
Fabri M
Leeds Metropolitan University Department of Computing The Grange, Beckett Park Leeds, LS6 3QS +44-113 2835161
Moore DJ
Leeds Metropolitan University Department of Computing The Grange, Beckett Park Leeds, LS6 3QS +44-113 2837556
Hobbs DJ
University of Bradford Department of EIMC Richmond Road Bradford, BD7 1DP +44-1274 236135
m.fabri@lmu.ac.uk
d.moore@lmu.ac.uk
d.hobbs@bradford.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
The premise of this paper is that agent technology in collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) may be enriched by incorporating an emotional channel alongside the conventional informational content, and that this would be best achieved through an associated visual human embodiment or avatar. Since humans express emotion in faceto-face encounters primarily through facial expression, an investigation was undertaken in order to establish how such expressions might be effectively and efficiently captured and represented in an avatar. The study involved consulting sociopsychological research relating to face-to-face encounters, followed by a controlled experiment to investigate user ability to interpret the faces of the avatars pre-prepared to express specific emotions. Effectiveness was demonstrated through good recognition rates for all but one of the emotion categories, and efficiency was established since a reduced feature set was found to be sufficient to build the successfully recognised core set of avatar facial expressions.
suggest that emotions are also an important factor in decisionmaking, problem solving, cognition and intelligence in general [37], [30], [9], [10]. Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) aim to reintroduce emotional and social context to distance communication whilst at the same time offering a stimulating and integrated framework for conversation and collaboration. Users can become actively engaged in interaction with the virtual world
Fabri M
Leeds Metropolitan University Department of Computing The Grange, Beckett Park Leeds, LS6 3QS +44-113 2835161
Moore DJ
Leeds Metropolitan University Department of Computing The Grange, Beckett Park Leeds, LS6 3QS +44-113 2837556
Hobbs DJ
University of Bradford Department of EIMC Richmond Road Bradford, BD7 1DP +44-1274 236135
m.fabri@lmu.ac.uk
d.moore@lmu.ac.uk
d.hobbs@bradford.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
The premise of this paper is that agent technology in collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) may be enriched by incorporating an emotional channel alongside the conventional informational content, and that this would be best achieved through an associated visual human embodiment or avatar. Since humans express emotion in faceto-face encounters primarily through facial expression, an investigation was undertaken in order to establish how such expressions might be effectively and efficiently captured and represented in an avatar. The study involved consulting sociopsychological research relating to face-to-face encounters, followed by a controlled experiment to investigate user ability to interpret the faces of the avatars pre-prepared to express specific emotions. Effectiveness was demonstrated through good recognition rates for all but one of the emotion categories, and efficiency was established since a reduced feature set was found to be sufficient to build the successfully recognised core set of avatar facial expressions.
suggest that emotions are also an important factor in decisionmaking, problem solving, cognition and intelligence in general [37], [30], [9], [10]. Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) aim to reintroduce emotional and social context to distance communication whilst at the same time offering a stimulating and integrated framework for conversation and collaboration. Users can become actively engaged in interaction with the virtual world