Title
Exploring agent physicality and social presence for medical team training
Abstract
Mixed reality and 3D user interface technologies have increased the immersion, presence, and physicality of user interactions. These technologies can also increase the physicality of embodied conversational agents (ECAs) by making the ECAs occupy and interact with the physical space. We propose that increasing the physicality of an ECA can increase the ECA's social presence, that is, the feeling that the ECA is a real person. In this paper, we examine existing research and formalize the idea of ECA physicality. We also explored the relationship between physicality and social presence by conducting two user studies (n = 18 and n = 29). Both user studies took place in a medical team training context and involved virtual human ECAs as fellow team members. The first study's results suggested that increasing physicality increased social presence and elicited more realistic behavior. The second study's results suggested that individual dimensions of physicality affect social presence to different extents.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1162/PRES_a_00145
Presence
Keywords
Field
DocType
conversational agents ecas,eca physicality,user studies n,fellow team member,social presence,user interface technology,user study,exploring agent physicality,user interaction,virtual human ecas,medical team training context
3d user interface,Computer science,Embodied cognition,Immersion (virtual reality),Virtual actor,Mixed reality,Physical space,User studies,Multimedia,Feeling
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
22
2
1054-7460
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
14
0.61
23
Authors
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Joon Hao Chuah1243.34
Andrew Robb26011.63
Casey White3353.98
Adam Wendling4353.98
Samsun Lampotang5555.36
Regis Kopper627218.94
Benjamin Lok726625.24