Reactive Virtual Agents: A Viewpoint-Driven Approach for Bodily Nonverbal Communication

Abstract

Non-verbal communication body cues are paramount to interact. In this preliminary work, we explore ways to let Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) simulating nonverbal communication capabilities. We propose an approach to control IVAs' reactive behaviour from the analysis of other agents' apparent motions, in a situation of "observed" IVAs that act and "observers" that react. For that, first a viewpoint-driven analysis of the observed agent's motion is done, and then a synthesis of this analysis induces the observers' reaction.