ITR: Using Virtual Environment Technology to Understand and Augment Social Interaction

该项目的重点是促进和增强虚拟环境中的社交互动，特别是沉浸式虚拟环境。 虚拟环境技术允许个人在数字“世界”中自由移动，以真实的时间观察环境和其中的虚拟他人并与之互动。虚拟环境技术和人的数字成像的日益复杂，预示着一个以技术为媒介的新时代地理上分离的个人的社交互动。然而，为了以有意义和富有成效的方式虚拟地实现这种交互，理解人们对彼此的非语言信号的感知的参数（例如，面部表情、手势、凝视）是必要的。这样的理解将提供一个层次分类的必要和足够的非语言信号是至关重要的虚拟环境中的社会互动，因此，必须跟踪和虚拟环境中的互动之间呈现。实现拟议项目的目标将促进社会互动和非语言行为、人类参与协作虚拟环境和技术（例如，计算机视觉）方面。

This project focuses on facilitating and augmenting social interaction in virtual environments, particularly immersive virtual environments. Virtual environment technology allows individuals to freely move about digital "worlds" in real time observing and interacting with the environment and virtual others within it. Increased sophistication of virtual environment technology and digital imaging of people promises a new age for technologically mediated social interaction of geographically separated individuals. However, in order to implement such interaction virtually in meaningful and productive ways, an understanding of the parameters of people's perceptions of each other's non-verbal signals (e.g., facial expressions, gestures, gaze) within virtual environments is necessary. Such an understanding will provide a hierarchical taxonomy of the necessary and sufficient non-verbal signals that are critical to social interaction within virtual environments and, therefore, must be tracked and rendered among interactions in virtual environments. Realizing the objectives of the proposed project will advance scientific understanding in the areas of social interaction and non-verbal behavior, human participation in collaborative virtual environments, and technological (e.g., computer vision) aspects of automated tracking and rendering of human on-verbal signals.