K. Kim, G. Bruder, and G. Welch, “Blowing in the Wind: Increasing Copresence with a Virtual Human via Airflow Influence in Augmented Reality,” in Proceedings of the combined International Conference on Artificial Reality & Telexistence and Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments (ICAT-EGVE), 2018, pp. 183–190, Limassol, Cyprus

Award Ceremony

Honorable Mention Award at ICAT-EGVE 2018

• Time & Location: October 30, 2018 at 3:00 PM in University Tower 650A
• Title: ENVIRONMENTAL PHYSICAL-VIRTUAL INTERACTION TO IMPROVE SOCIAL PRESENCE WITH A VIRTUAL HUMAN IN MIXED REALITY
• Abstract: Interactive Virtual Humans (VHs) are increasingly used to replace or assist real humans in various applications, e.g., military and medical training, education, or entertainment. In most VH research, the perceived social presence with a VH, which denotes the user’s sense of being socially connected or co-located with the VH, is the decisive factor in evaluating the social influence of the VH-a phenomenon where human users’ emotions, opinions, or behaviors are affected by the VH. The purpose of this dissertation is to develop new knowledge about how characteristics and behaviors of a VH in a Mixed Reality (MR) environment can affect the perception of and resulting behavior with the VH, and to find effective and efficient ways to improve the quality and performance of social interactions with VHs. Important issues and challenges in real-virtual human interactions in MR, e.g., lack of physical-virtual interactivity, are identified and discussed through several user studies incorporating interactions with VH systems. In the studies, different features of VHs are prototyped and evaluated, such as a VH’s ability to be aware of and influence the surrounding physical environment, while measuring objective behavioral data as well as collecting subjective responses from the participants. The results from the studies support the idea that the VH’s awareness and influence of the physical environment can improve not only the perceived social presence with the VH, but also the trustworthiness of the VH within a social context. The findings will contribute towards designing more influential VHs that can benefit a wide range of simulation and training applications for which a high level of social realism is important, and that can be more easily incorporated into our daily lives as social companions, providing reliable relationships and convenience in assisting with daily tasks.
• Major: Computer Science
• Educational Career:
  • Bachelor’s of Electronics and Computer Engineering, BS, 2009, Hanyang University
  • Master’s of Electronics and Computer Engineering, MS, 2011, Hanyang University
  • Master’s of Computer Science, MS, 2015, University of Central Florida
• Committee in Charge:
  • Gregory Welch, Chair, Computer Science
  • Avelino Gonzalez, Computer Science
  • Gita Sukthankar, Computer Science
  • Stephen Fiore, Philosophy
  • Gerd Bruder, Computer Science
  • Jeremy Bailenson, Communication, Stanford University

 
ICAT-EGVE 2018 Program

Susanne Schmidt, Gerd Bruder, and Frank Steinicke; Evaluation of Generic and Content – Specific Embodied Virtual Agents as Museum Guides for Historical Exhibitions

Paul Lubos, Gerd Bruder, and Frank Steinicke; SafeWalking Zones: Visual Guidance for Redirected Walking in Confined Real-World Spaces

Ryan Schubert, Gerd Bruder, and Gregory Welch; Adaptive Filtering of Physical-Virtual Artifacts for Synthetic Animatronics

Gregory Welch, Tianren Wang, Gary Bishop, and Gerd Bruder; A Novel Approach for Cooperative Motion Capture (COMOCAP)

Kangsoo Kim, Gerd Bruder, and Gregory F. Welch; Blowing in the Wind: Increasing Copresence with a Virtual Human via Airflow Influence in Augmented Reality

S. Haesler, K. Kim, G. Bruder, and G. Welch, “Seeing is Believing: Improving the Perceived Trust in Visually Embodied Alexa in Augmented Reality,” In Proceedings of the 17th IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2018, pp. xx–xx (Accepted)

The camera-ready version has been submitted.

IVA 2018 Program

Nahal Norouzi, Kangsoo Kim, Jason Hochreiter, Myungho Lee, Salam Daher, Gerd Bruder and Gregory Welch; A Systematic Survey of 15 Years of User Studies Published in the Intelligent Virtual Agents Conference

Salam Daher, Jason Hochreiter, Nahal Norouzi, Laura Gonzalez, Gerd Bruder and Gregory Welch; Physical-Virtual Agents for Healthcare Simulation

Kangsoo Kim, Mark Billinghurst, Gerd Bruder, Henry Been-Lirn Duh, and Gregory F. Welch, “Revisiting Trends in Augmented Reality Research: A Review of the 2nd Decade of ISMAR (2008–2017),” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (In Press)

Kangsoo Kim, Luke Boelling, Steffen Haesler, Jeremy N. Bailenson, Gerd Bruder, and Gregory F. Welch, “Does a Digital Assistant Need a Body? The Influence of Visual Embodiment and Social Behavior on the Perception of Intelligent Virtual Agents in AR,” In Proceedings of the 17th IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (In Press)