Nowadays, avatars are widely used in games and Internet environments. Especially, video game consoles such as Wii (Nintendo) use avatars for representing the user's alter ego. There are several ways to generate avatars. Most existing games or Internet services provide manual systems for generating avatars. Many researchers have suggested automatic avatar generation methods, most of which genera...

Remote monitoring of Parkinson's Disease (PD) patients with inertia sensors is a relevant method for a better assessment of symptoms. We present a new approach for symptom quantification based on motion data: the automatic Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) classification in combination with an animated 3D avatar giving the neurologist the impression of having the patient live in fr...

Novel avatar bodies are ones that are not controlled in a one-to-one relationship between the user’s body and the avatar body; for example, when the avatar’s arms are controlled by the user’s legs, or, when the avatar has a third arm. People have been shown to complete tasks more successfully when controlling novel avatar bodies than when controlling avatars that conform to the normal human con...

BACKGROUND Previous studies on Internet addiction point towards a particular constellation of personality traits and deficits in social competence of players addicted to massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), which are hypothesized to result from impairments in self-concept. The aim of this study was to examine differences in self-concept and degree of avatar identification ...

This paper describes the concept and control of a 3d Avatar system with mimic and gestures as a conversational user interface. The Avatar system including gestures and mimic is based on morphing techniques. It allows to generate sign language and mouth motion at lip reading quality in real time. The concept of a Speech Act is introduced and a table is defined to classify conversation fragments....

In this paper we describe the use of avatar “appearance codes” for professionals in Internet-Based Virtual Worlds like Second Life. We describe the results of a survey with 37 participants. Of those participants, 45.9% indicated that an avatar appearance that accurately represents your physical appearance is unimportant to professional interactions. We conclude that it is important that emergen...

Avatars are technological artifacts that provide communicators a body in virtual spaces. It is through this affordance of embodiment that people, places and things are made concrete, tangible, and present. Presence consists of two interrelated phenomena: (i) telepresence: the sense of being there, and (ii) social presence: the sense of being together with others. In the context of virtual world...

Avatar research has almost exclusively explored avatars that remain the same regardless of context. However, there may be advantages to avatars that change during use. A plethora of work has shown that avatars personalized in one’s likeness increases identification, while object-like avatars increase detachment. We posit that in certain situations within a game it may be more advantageous to ha...