Effects of Coupling in Human-Virtual Agent Body Interaction

Elisabetta Bevacqua (1) , Sankovic Igor (1) , Maatalaoui Ayoub (1) , A. Nédélec (2) , Pierre de Loor (3, 2)

1 Lab-STICC_ENIB_CID_IHSEV
2 Lab-STICC - Laboratoire des sciences et techniques de l'information, de la communication et de la connaissance
3 CERV - Centre Européen de Réalité Virtuelle

This paper presents a study of the dynamic coupling between a user and a virtual character during body interaction. Coupling is directly linked with other dimensions, such as co-presence, engagement, and believability, and was measured in an experiment that allowed users to describe their subjective feelings about those dimensions of interest. The experiment was based on a theatrical game involving the imitation of slow upper-body movements and the proposal of new movements by the user and virtual agent. The agent's behaviour varied in autonomy: the agent could limit itself to imitating the user's movements only, initiate new movements, or combine both behaviours. After the game, each participant completed a questionnaire regarding their engagement in the interaction, their subjective feeling about the co-presence of the agent, etc. Based on four main dimensions of interest, we tested several hypotheses against our experimental results, which are discussed here.

Mots clés: Human-virtual agent interaction; coupling; co-presence and engagement measurement; experimental study

Domaines: Informatique; Interface homme-machine [cs.HC]; Intelligence artificielle [cs.AI]; Synthèse d'image et réalité virtuelle [cs.GR]

Elisabetta Bevacqua, Sankovic Igor, Maatalaoui Ayoub, A. Nédélec, Pierre de Loor. Effects of Coupling in Human-Virtual Agent Body Interaction. Intelligent Virtual Agents, 14th International Conference, IVA 2014, Aug 2014, Boston, United States. pp.54-63. ⟨hal-01060113⟩