Adrian Bullock

Small group behaviour experiments in the Coven project

The Collaborative Virtual Environments (Coven) project, a four-year European project launched in October 1995, designs and explores collaborative virtual environment (CVE) technology. It aims to investigate the feasibility of scalable CVE worlds through developing CVE systems and demonstrating prototype applications in a virtual travel rehearsal scenario. Our experiments in collaborative virtual environments investigated group behavior issues such as relationships between emergent leadership and computational resources, and the sense of presence and copresence among participants.

SenToy: an affective sympathetic interface

We describe the design and implementation of SenToy: a tangible doll with sensors that allows a user to influence the emotions of a synthetic character in a game. SenToy is an input device that allows the user to perform gestures or movements that the sensors inside the doll pick up. The gestures are interpreted according to a scheme found through two different user studies: one Wizard of Oz study and one study with a fully functioning SenToy. Different gestures express one of the following emotions: anger, fear, surprise, sadness, gloating and happiness. Depending upon the expressed emotion, the synthetic character in the game will, in turn, perform different actions (trading, duelling, etc.). The evaluation of SenToy acting as the interface to the computer game Fantasy A has shown that the users were able to express the desired emotions to influence the synthetic characters, and that overall players liked the doll as an interface.

Information exploration using The Pond

In this paper we describe The Pond, a system used to search for and visualise data elements on an engaging tabletop display. The Pond uses methods of unencumbered interaction and audio feedback to allow users to investigate data elements, and supports shoulder-to-shoulder collaboration with the physical Pond artefact mediating the collaboration between those people gathered around it. The user interface is based on an ecosystem metaphor, presenting data elements in the form of shoals of aquatic creatures inside a virtual 3D pond. The Pond is an interactive system offering an appealing and novel way to search for and interchange information. We describe the motivation and design choices behind The Pond, the system as it stands today, details of its implementation, and observations from a study of The Pond in use.

Towards tangibility in gameplay: building a tangible affective interface for a computer game

In this paper we describe a way of controlling the emotional states of a synthetic character in a game (FantasyA) through a tangible interface named SenToy. SenToy is a doll with sensors in the arms, legs and body, allowing the user to influence the emotions of her character in the game. The user performs gestures and movements with SenToy, which are picked up by the sensors and interpreted according to a scheme found through an initial Wizard of Oz study. Different gestures are used to express each of the following emotions: anger, fear, happiness, surprise, sadness and gloating. Depending upon the expressed emotion, the synthetic character in FantasyA will, in turn, perform different actions. The evaluation of SenToy acting as the interface to the computer game FantasyA has shown that users were able to express most of the desired emotions to influence the synthetic characters, and that overall, players, especially children, really liked the doll as an interface.

FantasyA and SenToy

FantasyA is a role-playing game where emotions are part of the game logic. SenToy is a tangible interface device [2], used to influence emotional behaviour in FantasyA. Players in the game FantasyA have to master SenToy and exhibit a particular set of emotions and perform a set of actions in order to evolve in the game [3]. A study was undertaken to gauge the success of the overall gaming experience, as well as the individual components, the FantasyA game with its emotional content and the SenToy control device with its gestural input.

SenToy: a tangible interface to control the emotions of a synthetic character

In this paper we describe how to control the emotional states of a synthetic character in a computer game using a tangible interface named SenToy. SenToy is a doll with sensors in its arms, legs and body, which allows the user to influence the emotional state of his controlled character by gesturing with the doll. In general, SenToy works as a new type of interface to the role playing game, FantasyA, where players must exhibit a particular set of emotions and perform a set of actions as a way to evolve in the game. The evaluation of SenToy has shown that the users were able to express the desired emotions to influence the synthetic characters, and that overall payers liked the doll as an interface.

FantasyA – The Duel of Emotions

FantasyA is a computer game where two characters face each other in a duel and emotions are used as the driving elements in the action decision of the characters. In playing the game, the user influences the emotional state of his or her semi-autonomous avatar using a tangible interface for affective input, the SenToy. In this paper we show how we approached the problem of modelling the emotional states of the synthetic characters, and how to combine them with the perception of the emotions of the opponents in the game. This is done by simulating the opponents action tendencies in order to predict their possible actions. For the user to play, he or she must understand the emotional state of his opponent which is achieved through animations (featuring affective body expressions) of the character. FantasyA was evaluated with 30 subjects from different ages and the preliminary results showed that the users liked the game and were able to influence the emotional states of their characters, in particular the young users.

Designing for and interacting with CVEs

As CVE technology matures there is a natural shift away from simply providing places or spaces for people to meet towards providing a useful, task-oriented environment that supports its participants in whatever it is they are doing. Notably, CVEs are collaborative environments, so in order to provide appropriate environments we need to understand what it is that makes collaboration possible. To do this we need to consider collaboration in both real world and virtual world setting, e.g. [1], and how the two interact with each other. After all we are not going to use either of these environments (real and virtual) exclusively, rather they should complement each other and we should be able to work with people as easily in either.Presently, the boundary between physical environments and digital space can be over complex and poorly designed. We often take a narrow perspective, seeing interaction as information processing, and interaction technology as simply a desktop computer. We need to broaden our view to consider the whole gamut of human activities, understanding how information systems are a medium of communication between people as much as a tool individual access to data. We can use the findings on collaboration to influence how we design and build future CVEs so they afford the best chance of supporting meaningful and useful interaction between participants.

Demo: playingfFantasyA with senToy

Game development is an emerging area of development for new types of interaction between computers and humans. New forms of communication are now being explored there, influenced not only by face to face communication but also by recent developments in multi-modal communication and tangible interfaces. This demo will feature a computer game, FantasyA, where users can play the game by interacting with a tangible interface, SenToy (see Figure 1). The main idea is to involve objects and artifacts from real life into ways to interact with systems, and in particular with games. So, SenToy is an interface for users to project some of their emotional gestures through moving the doll in certain ways. This device would establish a link between the users (holding the physical device) and a controlled avatar (embodied by that physical device) of the computer game, FantasyA.

The interactive collaborative environments laboratory

We overview the Interactive Collaborative Environments laboratory at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science.