Avatars are increasingly used to express our emotions in our online communications. Such avatars are used based on the assumption that avatar expressions are interpreted universally among any cultures. However, our former study showed there are cultural differences in interpreting avatar facial expressions. This paper summarizes the results of cross cultural evaluations of avatar expressions am...

The Design of a Generic Signing Avatar Animation System J. Fourie Department of Mathematical Sciences (Computer Science) University of Stellenbosch Private Bag X1, 7602 Matieland, South Africa Thesis: MScEng (AM) November 2006 We designed a generic avatar animator for use in sign language related projects. The animator is capable of animating any given avatar that is compliant with the H-Anim s...

A major problem with the current generation of shared 3D virtual reality game-like environments on the Internet is that update of the virtual environment during avatar movement often lags considerably behind the scene which the avatar's user perceives. The result is an unsatisfying, artificial experience, in which the user must halt avatar movement until the new scene slowly assembles before th...

Millions of people worldwide engage in online role-playing with their avatar, a virtual agent that represents the self. Previous behavioral studies have indicated that many gamers identify more strongly with their avatar than with their biological self. Through their avatar, gamers develop social networks and learn new social-cognitive skills. The cognitive neurosciences have yet to identify th...

An impediment to Web-based retail sales is the impersonal nature of Web-based shopping. A solution to this problem is to use an avatar to deliver product information. An avatar is a graphic representation that can be animated by means of computer technology. Study 1 shows that using an avatar sales agent leads to more satisfaction with the retailer, a more positive attitude toward the product, ...

We present data collected from launches of a web-based, multi-user, avatar-centered flirting and dating community, the Flirtboat, in three different countries (UK, Austria and Croatia). We discuss user activity and persistence to the system relative to avatar gender. We cross-classify avatar gender with avatar age, and gender with personality. Moreover we address user preferences for the looks ...

the present article studies the symbolism in the poetry of badrshakir al-siab. his literary method played an important role in leading the literature of 50s and 60s in iraq and the whole arab world. this article tries to express how siab after becoming familiar with western literature and being affected by the european symbolist poets could add a new form to the contemporary arabic poetry. he t...

This paper describes a small experimental study where pedagogical agents (avatars) are added to voice-over-slide learning materials. Four different agent behaviours are tested: Avatar A performs all the upper-body gestures of the lecturer; Avatar B is animated using few random gestures in order to create a natural presence, but one that is unrelated to the speech; Avatar C only performs the lec...

Looking at one's own body has been shown to induce analgesia. In the present work we investigated whether illusory self-identification with an avatar, as induced experimentally through visuo-tactile stimulation, modulates the response to painful stimuli. In 30 healthy volunteers, a robotic device was used to stroke the participants' back, while they viewed either the body of an avatar, a non-bo...

In this paper we study how the visual animation of a self-avatar can be artificially modified in real-time in order to generate different haptic perceptions. In our experimental setup, participants could watch their self-avatar in a virtual environment in mirror mode while performing a weight lifting task. Users could map their gestures on the self-animated avatar in real-time using a Kinect. W...