Digital Humans Project

"If a digital human gave you a compliment, would it brighten your day?" - Dr. Larry Hodges

 

Welcome to the Digital Humans Research Project at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  The project is a part of the Virtual Environments Group in the Future Computing Lab of the Computer Science Department at UNC-C.

Our research interests include all aspects of digital humans, including interaction, rendering, psychology, and perception.  Can digital humans make you cry, laugh, depressed, or elated?  How can an object, so obviously not real, elicit such emotions?  The fundamental question that this leads to is:  Do virtual characters produce the same responses as real characters?

Specifically, we are investigating:
  • How people interact with digital characters
  • How digital characters interact with people
  • The importance of various aspects of digital characters for conveying information

 

Applied to:

  • Using digital characters in social skills training
  • Tele-collaboration (working together over large distances)
  • Virtual environments
  • Virtual Tour Guides

(Real) People

Projects

 

Publications

"Can a virtual cat persuade you? The role of gender and realism in speaker persuasiveness.",  Zanbaka, C., Goolkasian, P., and Hodges, L. F. Accepted to CHI 2006 April 22 - 27, Montréal, Québec, Canada.

"Marve: a prototype virtual human interface framework for studying human-virtual human interaction.",  Babu, S., Schmugge, S., Inugala, R., Rao, S., Barnes, T., Hodges, L.F. Proceedings of the 5th International Working Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (Kos, Greece, September 2005, T. Panayiotopoulos et al.(Eds.) Springer-Verlag), pp.120-133.

"Effects of Virtual Human Presence on Task Performance",  Catherine Zanbaka, Amy Ulinski, Paula Goolkasian, Larry F. Hodges. Accepted to International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence (ICAT) 2004, Seoul Korea, Nov. 30 - Dec 2. PDF

"Interactive Digital Patient for Triage Nurse Training" (Invited Paper), Caroline Ziemkiewicz, Amy Ulinski, Sonya Hardin, Larry F. Hodges. 1st International Conference on Virtual Reality 2005, Las Vegas, Nevada 22 - 27 July.

"Lessons Learned in Assessing Human-Virtual Human Interaction" (Invited Paper), Catherine Zanbaka, Benjamin Lok, Paula Goolkasian1, Larry F. Hodges. 1st International Conference on Virtual Reality 2005, Las Vegas, Nevada 22 - 27 July.

"Virtual Human Physiotherapist Framework for Personalized Training and Rehabilitation.",  Babu, S., Zanbaka, C., Jackson, J., Chung, T-O., Lok, B., Shin, M.C., and Hodges,, L.F. Graphics Interface 2005 Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, May 9 - 11, 2005.

Links

  •  Haptek Virtual Character software.

 

Last Modified: 10/22/2004 (czanbaka@uncc.edu)

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