Conversational Pointing Gestures for Virtual Reality Interaction: Implications from an Empirical Study

Interaction in conversational interfaces strongly relies on the system's capability to interpret the user's references to objects via deictic expressions. Deictic gestures, especially pointing gestures, provide a powerful way of referring to objects and places, e.g., when communicating with an embodied conversational agent in a virtual reality environment. We highlight results drawn from a study on pointing and draw conclusions for the implementation of pointing-based conversational interactions in partly immersive virtual reality.