Interactive product presentation techniques have recently gained importance in online marketing of house products. Real-time simulation offers a high level interactive presentation with more powerful features to present product functions and variations. This article presents a novel computational approach for engaging and supporting consumers in making informed choices about purchasing house pr...

A plausible assumption is that self-avatars increase the realism of immersive virtual environments (VEs), because self-avatars provide the user with a visual representation of his/her own body. Consequently having a self-avatar might lead to more realistic human behavior. To test this hypothesis we compared human behavior in VE with and without providing knowledge about a self-avatar with real ...

BACKGROUND Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterised by severe instability in emotions, identity, relationships and impulsive behaviour. One contributing factor to BPD is deficient mentalizing-our ability to understand the mental states of others and ourselves. Psychotherapies can be effective at reducing symptoms of BPD but effects are small. Innovative ways of enhancing existing ...

Recognizing avatar faces is a challenge and very important issue for terrorism and security experts. Recently some avatar face recognition techniques are proposed but they are still limited. In this paper, we propose a novel face recognition technique based on discrete wavelet transform and Adapted Median Binary Pattern (AMBP) operator to recognize avatar faces from different virtual worlds. Th...

Animated pedagogical agents with characteristics such as facial expressions, gestures, and human emotions, under an interactive user interface are attractive to students and have high potential to promote students’ learning. This study proposes a convenient method to add an embodied empathic avatar into a computer-aided learning program; learners express their emotions by mouse-clicking while r...

It has been consistently demonstrated that deceivers generally can be discriminated from truth tellers by monitoring an increase in their physiological response. But is this still the case when deceivers interact with a virtual avatar? The present research investigated whether the mere "belief" that the virtual avatar is computer or human operated forms a crucial factor for eliciting physiologi...

This paper outlines our recent research that is providing users with a 3D avatar representation, and in particular focuses on studies in which the avatar is self-animated in real time. We use full body motion tracking, so when participants move their hands and feet, these movements are mapped onto the avatar. In a recent study (Dodds et al., CASA 2010), we found that a selfanimated avatar aided...

Avatars, representations of people in virtual environments, are subject to human control. However, for most applications, it is impractical for a person to directly control each joint in a complex avatar. Rather, people must be allowed to specify complex behaviours with simple instructions and the avatar permitted to select the correct movements in sequence to execute the instruction. This requ...

In this work, a new algorithm for autonomous avatar motion is presented. The new algorithm is based in the Rapidly-exploring Random Tree (RRT) and an appropriate ontology. It uses a novel approach for calculating the motion sequence planning for the different avatar limbs: legs or arms. First, the algorithm uses the information stored in the ontology concerning the avatar structure and the Degr...

In this paper, we investigate racial diversity in avatar design and public discussions about race within a large-scale teen virtual world called Whyville.net with more than 1.5 million registered players ages 8-16. One unique feature of Whyville is the players’ ability to customize their avatars with various face parts and accessories, all designed and sold by other players in Whyville. Our fin...