Towards Communication with Virtual Humans

Natural interaction between application user of a Virtual Environment (VE) and autonomous characters is a key challenge in enhancing the realism in virtual environments. Traditional interaction methods with autonomous characters such as virtual humans using keyboard and mouse do not provide an intuitive user experience. This paper presents an approach that enables user to communicate and control virtual humans in an intuitive manner compared to traditional approaches. Such a metaphors would significantly benefit the application domains such as training simulations, 3D social media networks and computer gaming. The approach uses head direction of user and voice commands in grabbing attention of a Virtual Human and initiating a conversation. The prototype implemented uses computer vision based head tracking approach with one web camera and four LEDs. The user study results show that the approach provides an enhanced user experience in the VE.