1. Communicating with Avatar Bodies
Francesca Barrientos
Computer Science UC Berkeley
8 July 1999 HCC Research Retreat
Introduce myself
Define avatar
Avatar represents a human
Imagine a seriousmeeting in a virtual environment
Then your avatar becomes your virtual body
Nonverbal communicative behaviors in the real-world
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Consider using avatars as the medium through with communicate
What kind of communicative power to do you have now that you didn’t have before

2. Avatar worlds ComicChat Oz blaxxun State of the art
Mostly text-based chat
blaxxun

3. Nonverbal behaviors Gesture Proxemics Posture Facial expression Gaze
Context
Appearance
...

4. Previous approaches (Nivi waves to Harry.) Natural
Language
Inference
Expression selection
Automatic
animation

5. Beyond chat
Interfaces for controlling animation of nonverbal behaviors
verbal communication through audio
continuous control
Understand how user movements translate onto avatar bodies
Also say something about research plan here

6. Importance of synchrony
Part of meaning of gesture comes from its co-ocurrence with speech
Rhythm, flow, stroke, force, shape…

7. Kinematic mapping

8. Evaluation Depends on task Ease of use Expressive satisfaction
Level of interaction engagement
Emergent communicative behaviors

9. Explore design space

10. Network issues
Synchronizing control and audio data

11. Summary Avatars allow communication using surrogate bodies
Gesture and speech are coexpressive
Design tool: virtual prototypes for PRoP design