Inferring a User's Intent on Joining or Passing by Social Groups

ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA), pp. 1–8

Abstract

Modeling the interactions between users and social groups of virtual agents (VAs) is vital in many virtual-reality-based applications. However, only little research on group encounters has been conducted yet. We intend to close this gap by focusing on the distinction between joining and passing-by a group. To enhance the interactive capacity of VAs in these situations, knowing the user's objective is required to show reasonable reactions. To this end, we propose a classification scheme which infers the user's intent based on social cues such as proxemics, gazing and orientation, followed by triggering believable, non-verbal actions on the VAs. We tested our approach in a pilot study with overall promising results and discuss possible improvements for further studies.

Authors 4

1. Andrea Bönsch Aachen Visual Computing Institute

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Visual Computing Institute, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

2. Alexander R. Bluhm Aachen Department of Computer Science

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Computer Science, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

3. Jonathan Ehret Aachen Visual Computing Institute

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Visual Computing Institute, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

4. Torsten Kuhlen Aachen Visual Computing Institute

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Visual Computing Institute, RWTH Aachen University, Germany