The Application of Affective Virtual Human in Intelligent Web Tutoring System

AbstractVirtual reality platforms producing interactive and highly realistic characters are being used more and more as a research tool in social and affective neuroscience to better capture both the dynamics of emotion communication and the unintentional and automatic nature of emotional processes. While idle motion (i.e., non-communicative movements) is commonly used to create behavioural realism, its use to enhance the perception of emotion expressed by a virtual character is critically lacking. This study examined the influence of naturalistic (i.e., based on human motion capture) idle motion on two aspects (the perception of other’s pain and affective reaction) of an empathic response towards pain expressed by a virtual character. In two experiments, 32 and 34 healthy young adults were presented video clips of a virtual character displaying a facial expression of pain while its body was either static (still condition) or animated with natural postural oscillations (idle condition). The participants in Experiment 1 rated the facial pain expression of the virtual human as more intense, and those in Experiment 2 reported being more touched by its pain expression in the idle condition compared to the still condition, indicating a greater empathic response towards the virtual human’s pain in the presence of natural postural oscillations. These findings are discussed in relation to the models of empathy and biological motion processing. Future investigations will help determine to what extent such naturalistic idle motion could be a key ingredient in enhancing the anthropomorphism of a virtual human and making its emotion appear more genuine.

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Exploring the Effect of Virtual Robot Acceleration on Perceived Competitiveness/ Cooperativeness, Animacy, and Intelligence

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting ◽

10.1177/1071181320641382 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 64 (1) ◽

pp. 1595-1599

Author(s):

Jordan Sasser ◽

Fernando Montalvo ◽

Rhyse Bendell ◽

P. A. Hancock ◽

Daniel S. McConnell

Keyword(s):

Virtual Reality ◽

Visual Perception ◽

Social Perception ◽

Virtual Human ◽

Ecological Approach ◽

Direct Process ◽

Perceptual Judgments ◽

Direct Social Perception

Prior research has indicated that perception of acceleration may be a direct process. This direct process may be conceptually linked to the ecological approach to visual perception and a further extension of direct social perception. The present study examines the effects of perception of acceleration in virtual reality on participants’ perceived attributes (perceived intelligence and animacy) of a virtual human-like robot agent and perceived agent competitive/cooperativeness. Perceptual judgments were collected after experiencing one of the five different conditions dependent on the participant’s acceleration: mirrored acceleration, faster acceleration, slowed acceleration, varied acceleration resulting in a win, and varied acceleration resulting in a loss. Participants experienced each condition twice in a counterbalanced fashion. The focus of the experiment was to determine whether different accelerations influenced perceptual judgments of the observers. Results suggest that faster acceleration was perceived as more competitive and slower acceleration was reported as low in animacy and perceived intelligence.

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A medical tele-tutoring system for the Emergency Service

2021 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops and other Affiliated Events (PerCom Workshops) ◽

10.1109/percomworkshops51409.2021.9431030 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Anna Lina Ruscelli ◽

Gabriele Cecchetti ◽

Igor Barsanti ◽

Mirco Manciulli ◽

Piero Paolini ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Emergency Service ◽

Tutoring System

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