This paper discusses the findings on the viewpoint of an avatar-controlling user on the basis of experimentation with an implemented avatar-mediated telecommunication system. Communication using an avatar with facial expressions is useful when a user wants to express emotions. On top of this feature, our system supports automatic avatar movement toward nearest visible location to the target, wh...

Psychometric studies suggest that observed self-concept deficits in addicted massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) are compensated through the replacement of their ideal (i.e., how an individual would like to be) by their own avatar (i.e., graphical agent in the virtual world). Neurobiological studies indicate that increased identification with their own avatar in regular MMOR...

Previous research has shown that violent video games can increase aggression in players immediately after they play. The present research examines the effects of one subtle cue within violent video games that might moderate these effects-whether the avatar is male or female. One common stereotype is that males are more aggressive than females. Thus, playing a violent video game as a male avatar...

A self-avatar is known to have a potentially significant impact on the user's experience of the immersive content but it can also affect how users interact with each other in a shared virtual environment (SVE). We implemented an SVE for a consumer virtual reality system where each user's body could be represented by a jointed self-avatar that was dynamically controlled by head and hand controll...

Controlling Expressive Avatar Gesture by Francesca A. Barrientos Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science University of California, Berkeley Professor John F. Canny, Chair An avatar represents a person and functions as that person’s virtual body within a virtual space. Just as a person can use gesture and other bodily movements to communicate nonverbally in the real world, so too can a person u...

In virtual reality (VR), it is possible to embody avatars that are dissimilar to the physical self. We examined whether embodying a dissimilar self in VR would decrease anxiety in a public speaking situation. We report the results of an observational pilot study and two laboratory experiments. In the pilot study (N = 252), participants chose an avatar to use in a public speaking task. Trait pub...

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 studies showed there are cultural differences in interpreting avatar facial expressions. This paper summarizes the results of the former studies of cross cultural evaluations ...

AVATAR is a real-time extension of SysML supported by the TTool open-source toolkit. So far, formal verification of AVATAR models has relied on reachability techniques that face a state explosion problem. The paper explores a new avenue: applying structural analysis to AVATAR model, so as to identify mutual exclusion situations. In practice, TTool translates a subset of an AVATAR model into a P...