Nonverbal communication and believable interaction in virtual environments

Nonverbal communication and believable interaction in virtual environments

Angélica de Antonio,
Gustavo Carrazoni,
Guadalupe Aguado,
Javier Segovia
U. Politecnica de Madrid

We bet on the great importance of Virtual Environments (VE) in the future as a natural way of interaction between individuals, perhaps very distant. However, most current VE have not produced the necessary qualitative jump in interaction procedures between VE users (through their virtual representations, called avatars). One of the main deficiencies in the interaction between participants in most current virtual worlds is the apparent lack of emotion and life of the avatars that act on behalf of the users. An interaction based exclusively on limited channels such as reading and writing is at the core of this lack of believability. Nevertheless, we think that this suspension of disbelief, or believability, does not require a high degree of realism in the avatars and/or VE representation, but the use of every communication channel that is available in interaction processes in real life (speech, gestures, sounds, onomatopoeias, reflex movements, etc.), as well as new imaginative communication channels that can be used in an ar tificially created world, where the laws of physic or logic do not apply.
When more expressive avatars are sought, most of the current approaches are heavily based on facial expression, together with the use of hand and/or body gestures. The philosophy underlying this approach is to build a simulation of real life. Realism is many times considered a must, and a lot of effort is being spent in the design of advanced computer graphics algorithms that allow three dimensional humanlike figures to walk in a natural way, to move their lips when they talk or to wear clothes that move realistically, according to its composition and the body posture and movements.
Although this can be necessary in certain situations, our hypothesis is that expressiveness in avatars and believable interaction can sometimes be achieved without very complex or realistic mechanisms, but through the combined use of simple visual or auditory clues. The world is full of symbols with a generally common interpretation, that can be used to support humanlike expression. For instance, everyone would guess that a person has a cold personality if the body of its avatar is made of ice. A quick sequence of signs coming out of an avatar's brain could be easily interpreted as a sign of active reasoning, while an slow sequence could show a contemplative attitude. A bright red body would belong to a passionate person, while a black one would be interpreted as a sinister or pessimistic character. Our experiment consists of a set of quite simple avatars, that have been designed with the constraint of not having a face. Each one is equipped with a different repertory of mechanisms to show its mood and personality and to react to the environment. Colors, music, symbols surrounding the avatar, body material or rhythm of events are some of the mechanisms that are being studied as alternative communication channels.

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