CAN INTERACTING WITH A VIRTUAL HUMAN MAKE YOU A BETTER PERSON?

BENJAMIN LOK, PH.D.UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

ISVC 2011, September 28th, 2011

Virtual Environment Fidelity

Virtual Iraq, USC, ICT

Virtual Environment Fidelity

Ford Vehicle Simulator

Virtual Environment Fidelity

Flatworlds, USC, ICT

Goal of Talk

Virtual environments have high fidelity

Flatworlds, USC, ICT

Virtual Iraq, USC, ICT

Ford Vehicle Simulator

Goal of Talk

I propose the next area of VR and computer graphics research will focus on virtual humans

How virtual humans affect people How people are using virtual humans Research directions of virtual humans Motivate you to explore virtual humans in your own

research

Image courtesy of Skip Rizzo, University of Southern California

Example Virtual Human Interaction

Video courtesy of Skip Rizzo, University of Southern California

Can interacting with a virtual human make you a better person?

Dr. Gregory HouseGood with medical knowledgeNot so good with interacting with people

Dr. Doug RossGood with medical knowledgeGood with interacting with people

Dr. Derek ShepherdGood with medical knowledgeGood with interacting with people

Expanding applicability of simulation Humans are social creatures

Virtual humans impact us in a fundamentally differently way than virtual environments

Virtual humans enable computer graphics and virtual reality to be applied to new areas

This talk will focus on

Virtual humans as interaction partners

How can they affect us?

Teach us?

Change us?

Deployment - Continuum of Experiences

Virtual Worlds

Immersive Interaction

Video Conference

Chat

Web BrowserInstant Message

Mobile Deployment

Imm

ersi

on

Images from www.virtualpatientsgroup.comFidelity, Learning efficacy

Commercial Virtual Humans

Up – PixarUp – Pixar

Commercial Virtual Humans

L. A. Noire – Rockstar GamesL. A. Noire – Rockstar Games

Affect: Bias

Would health profession students treat these virtual human patients differently?

Images from the Virtual Patients project at verg.cise.ufl.edu

Affect: Paranoia

Images courtesy of Mel Slater, University of Barcelona

Affect: Social Facilitation

Zanbaka, ICAT 2004

Affect: Phobia treatment

Fear of public speaking (Pertaub 2002, Virtually Better)

Affect: Emotions and Ethics

Affect: Social norms

What would you do if she sneezed?

Pixels mean different things

What do you see?

Training

Think of tasks that everyone does almost everyday…

Interact with another person

Yet training for this is very limited.

Humans are social creatures!

How do people train to interact with others? Lectures

Human resources training Case studies Videos Role-play

With other students, instructors, actors Actors -> gold standard for many fields

MedicineMilitary

Training with a VH

Impacts Education (teachers with students) Military (leadership training) Law Enforcement (police officers and suspects)

Justine Cassell – Carnegie Mellon University, USC ICT

Real change in behavior

Would you be influenced more by?

Baylor & Plant 2005

Benefits of Virtual Humans?

Providing experiences is logistically complex Frequency Standardization Diversity Feedback Resources

Military Version Sexual Assault Patient PrototypeImage courtesy of Skip Rizzo, University of Southern California

Benefits of Virtual Humans?

Abnormal findings

New research areas

Visual realism Haptics Cognition Personality What would it take to

make people care VR notions of presence

and immersion do not directly apply

Image courtesy of Justine Cassell, Carnegie Mellon University

Future Implications• Revolutionize interpersonal

training– Culture– Communication Skills

• Help people with communication skills deficiencies– Fear of public speaking– Social phobias (e.g. paranoia)– Autism– Bias

Images courtesy of Sabarish Babu – Clemson University

Companies are starting up!

Shadow Health.com

Alelo.com

So Can Virtual Humans Make You a Better Person? If you want them to, we know they

can Affect you

You can learn from interacting them

Change your behavior

We can do a better job to

Expose others to our new findings and technology How many people have tried out

your innovations? There is a hunger out there!

Virtual People Factory

www.virtualpeoplefactory.com Web-based interface to virtual humans Deployed Early 2008

56 active developers 2700 users 105,000 utterances

Demo

Mobile Distribution of Simulation Deploy simulations via

mobile platforms Android app, released

December 2010, over 4600 downloads

In Android Market, search for “Virtual Patient”

Image from www.virtualpatientsgroup.com

Museum of Science and Industry

Science museum in Tampa, FL

Integrate a VH interaction Public health literacy

Research About 4000 people per

year enter our exhibit About n=~400 per year

are usable datapoints for studies

Repositories

MedEdPORTAL Peer reviewed medical education resource

400 institutions downloads in 10 months

Play Video Games

Wii mote, Kinect, 3D Displays, Large displays, smartphones People are leveraging VR technologies They would benefit from our research We must be willing to adapt

Social Network, Read Engadget Embrace these communities

Or risk obsolescence Our students already are, our collaborators

are beginning to Leverage social networks distributions

E.g. Johnny Lee wiimote (15 million views) How many google citations are a “seminal

paper” Rendering equation – google scholar 1480.

Justin Bieber – 630 million views

I hope this talk motivated you to… Explore virtual humans in your research

As a community, have more people interact with your research

Embrace the new wave of technology to interact and distribute

Inspire people outside this room

Thank You!

Build your own virtual patients: www.virtualpatientsgroup.comContact: lok@cise.ufl.eduSupport: National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health