A Study of Intelligent Nonverbal Communications System on the Internet Cyberspace

The nonverbal communication can be used as a communication means between avatars having no common language in the Internet. Recently the sign language communication[1] system between avatars of different languages has been investigated as a means of overcoming the linguistic barrier. In this paper, we proposed an intelligent communications method, where sets of animations parameters such as the joint angles of gesture were transmitted instead of sending the entire-real motion pictures. We designed a nonverbal communication system using 3D avatar and intelligent Communication Method on the Internet as trial to through the linguistic barrier. In this paper, we demonstrate an experimental avatar language system based on Japanese, Chinese, Korean and English sign language with which the human user can be communicate non-verbally with each other using 3D animation on the Internet cyberspace. Since the original avatar language gestures analyzed and coded intelligently, we call the communication method discussed in this paper as intelligent communication method. The method on client-server architecture could be practice a real-time communication. In this method, 3D avatar models are stored at all clients in advance and only intelligently coded data such as joint angles are transmitted instead of motion images or their compression. Experimental results show a possibility that the nonverbal communication system using intelligent method could be provides a mean overcoming the linguistic barrier in the Internet.