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Evaluation of Omnipresent Virtual Agents Embedded as Temporarily Required Assistants in Immersive Environments


Andrea Bönsch, Jan Hoffmann, Jonathan Wendt, Torsten Wolfgang Kuhlen
IEEE Virtual Humans and Crowds for Immersive Environments (VHCIE), 2019
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When designing the behavior of embodied, computer-controlled, human-like virtual agents (VA) serving as temporarily required assistants in virtual reality applications, two linked factors have to be considered: the time the VA is visible in the scene, defined as presence time (PT), and the time till the VA is actually available for support on a user’s calling, defined as approaching time (AT).

Complementing a previous research on behaviors with a low VA’s PT, we present the results of a controlled within-subjects study investigating behaviors by which the VA is always visible, i.e., behaviors with a high PT. The two behaviors affecting the AT tested are: following, a design in which the VA is omnipresent and constantly follows the users, and busy, a design in which theVAis self-reliantly spending time nearby the users and approaches them only if explicitly asked for. The results indicate that subjects prefer the following VA, a behavior which also leads to slightly lower execution times compared to busy.

» Show BibTeX

@InProceedings{Boensch2019c,
author = {Andrea B\"{o}nsch and Jan Hoffmann and Jonathan Wendt and Torsten W. Kuhlen},
title = {{Evaluation of Omnipresent Virtual Agents Embedded as Temporarily Required Assistants in Immersive Environments}},
booktitle = {IEEE Virtual Humans and Crowds for Immersive Environments (VHCIE)},
year = {2019},
doi={10.1109/VHCIE.2019.8714726},
month={March}
}




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