High-Fidelity Avatars for Behaviour and Cognition Research

用于行为和认知研究的高保真化身

• 批准号: ES/X011208/1
• 负责人: Markus Bindemann
• 金额: $ 88.66万
• 依托单位: University of Kent
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FX011208%2F1
• 关键词: Fidelity; Avatars; Behaviour; Cognition; Research

Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming more and more sophisticated. It is now possible to build worlds inhabited by avatars representing real people, whose likenesses have been 'scanned in' to the system. Of course, these developments have been driven by the entertainment and gaming industry, but the development of this technology also opens up many new opportunities for social sciences researchers. In short, it is possible to carry out research and conduct experiments in 'virtual space' situations that would be very difficult to set up in real life.Our research aims to develop an easy-to-use toolkit for researchers to build virtual worlds for the purpose of research. We will develop procedures for constructing realistic avatars, based on real people, which can interact with experimental participants in natural ways, including moment-by-moment changes in facial expression and eye-direction. These are cues that are very important to everyday interactions, but they are difficult to control in typical lab-based experiments - for example to ensure that all participants are exposed to the same experience. This becomes possible in virtual reality, where experimenters can manipulate the behaviour of the avatars relatively straightforwardly. Our previous ESRC-funded work in a Virtual Reality airport has shown that certain tasks, for example checking passports, can be simulated in ways that are very close to real-life settings. Furthermore, experimental results are very similar in both settings. Here we will develop further the range of possibilities for interacting with avatars (i.e. beyond simple identity checking). We will also develop general tools for researchers to create rich virtual environments containing people who can interact dynamically and flexibly with users. We will create manuals and walk-through videos to support researchers building their experiments, without the need for complex programming skills. In this way, we aim to make available the recent advances in VR technology to social scientists, opening up exciting possibilities for new research.

虚拟现实技术（VR）正变得越来越复杂。现在有可能建立一个由代表真人的化身居住的世界，这些人的肖像已经被“扫描”到系统中。当然，这些发展是由娱乐和游戏产业推动的，但这项技术的发展也为社会科学研究人员开辟了许多新的机会。简而言之，在“虚拟空间”中进行研究和实验是可能的，这在现实生活中是很难建立的。我们的研究旨在为研究人员开发一个易于使用的工具包，以建立研究目的的虚拟世界。我们将开发构建基于真人的逼真化身的程序，这些化身可以以自然的方式与实验参与者互动，包括面部表情和眼睛方向的瞬间变化。这些线索对日常互动非常重要，但在典型的实验室实验中很难控制——例如，确保所有参与者都接触到相同的体验。这在虚拟现实中成为可能，实验人员可以相对直接地操纵化身的行为。我们之前在esrc资助的虚拟现实机场的工作表明，某些任务，例如检查护照，可以以非常接近现实环境的方式模拟。此外，两种情况下的实验结果非常相似。在这里，我们将进一步开发与化身交互的可能性范围（即超越简单的身份检查）。我们还将为研究人员开发通用工具，以创建丰富的虚拟环境，其中包含可以动态灵活地与用户交互的人。我们将创建手册和演练视频，以支持研究人员建立他们的实验，而不需要复杂的编程技能。通过这种方式，我们的目标是将VR技术的最新进展提供给社会科学家，为新的研究开辟令人兴奋的可能性。