Paper Info
Title
Continuous Presence in Collaborative Virtual Environments: Towards a Hybrid Avatar-Agent Model for User Representation
Abstract
This paper is concerned with the evaluation of user embodiments in educational collaborative virtual environments by exploring an important aspect of interaction in virtual environments, namely the degree of 'presence' experienced by participants. Firstly, the influence of different avatar styles is examined using a specially designed prototype virtual art gallery. The choice of experimental procedure, together with analysis and interpretation of the results are presented and discussed. A second possible factor influencing presence, namely the continuous representation of users is examined within the same prototype environment, but this time using a hybrid avatar-agent model featuring an animated conversational agent to control the avatar during absence of its underlying user. The consequences of continuous presence in a collaborative virtual environment, particularly in respect of possible benefits for learning environments, are discussed and a forthcoming set of experiments to evaluate the effect of such an agent on users' experience of presence is outlined.
Year
DOI
Venue
2001
10.1007/3-540-44812-8_12
IVA
Keywords
Field
DocType
hybrid avatar-agent model,educational collaborative virtual environment,possible factor,continuous presence,collaborative virtual environments,continuous representation,virtual environment,possible benefit,prototype virtual art gallery,collaborative virtual environment,different avatar style,animated conversational agent,user representation,conversational agent
Autonomous agent,Intelligent agent,Virtual machine,Virtual reality,Computer science,Virtual art,Collaborative virtual environment,Human–computer interaction,Dialog system,User interface,Multimedia
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
3-540-42570-5
15
1.23
References 
Authors
17
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
M. Gerhard1151.23
David J. Moore29911.83
Dave Hobbs312914.01