Kip Haynes

Embodied Conversational Agent Avatars in Virtual Worlds: Making Today’s Immersive Environments More Responsive to Participants

Intelligent agents in the form of avatars in networked virtual worlds (VWs) are a new form of embodied conversational agent (ECA). They are still a topic of active research, but promise soon to rival the sophistication of virtual human agents developed on stand-alone platforms over the last decade. Such agents in today’s VWs grew out of two lines of historical research: Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence. Their merger forms the basis for today’s persistent 3D worlds occupied by intelligent characters serving a wide range of purposes. We believe ECA avatars will help to enable VWs to achieve a higher level of meaningful interaction by providing increased engagement and responsiveness within environments where people will interact with and even develop relationships with them.

Maintaining Psycho-Social Health on the Way to Mars and Back

In future long duration Mars exploration missions, network limitations and the lack of real-time communication capabilities will impact various aspects of space crew performance as well as behavioral health. Studies in ground-based analogs of Isolated and Confined Environments (ICE) such as Antarctica have identified sensory and social monotony as threats to crew psychological well-being. Given the importance of behavioral health to mission success and the extreme conditions of space travel, new methods of maintaining psycho-social health and social connections to support systems are critical. We describe ANSIBLE -- A Network of Social Interactions for Bilateral Life Enhancement. ANSIBLE leverages Virtual Environments (VEs) to deliver evidence based wellness promoting strategies and socially intelligent Virtual Agents (VAs) as tools to facilitate asynchronous human-human communication, and counteract behavioral health challenges associated with prolonged isolation and deep space exploration.

Environmental and Immersive Display Research at the University of Southern California

The University of Southern California and its collaborative research partner, Fakespace Labs, are participating in a number of research programs to invent and implement new forms of display technologies for immersive and semi-immersive applications. This paper briefly describes three of these technologies and highlights a few emerging results from those efforts. The first system is a rear projected 300 degree field of view cylindrical display. It is driven by 11 projectors with geometry correction and edge blending hardware. A full scale prototype will be completed in March 2006. The second system is a 14 screen projected panoramic room environment used as an advanced teaching and meeting space. It can be driven by a cluster of personal computers or low-cost DVD players, or driven by a single personal computer. The third is a prototype stereoscopic head mounted display that can be worn in a fashion similar to standard dust protection goggles. It provides a field of view in excess of 150 degrees.

ANSIBLE: A Virtual World Ecosystem for Improving Psycho-Social Well-being

We describe preliminary results of ANSIBLE – A Network of Social Interactions for Bilateral Life Enhancement. ANSIBLE leverages virtual worlds to deliver evidence based wellness promoting strategies and virtual agents as tools to facilitate asynchronous human-human communication in order to counteract behavioral health challenges associated with prolonged isolation and deep space exploration. ANSIBLE was deployed in August 2015 in a 12 month study with six crew members in an isolation simulated Mars habitat facility. In this paper, we compare the data for the first five months of this mission to a previous control mission for which ANSIBLE was not used. We found initial support for ANSIBLE to increase perceptions of closeness and satisfaction with friend and family relationships (but not other crew members) during prolonged isolation as well as a trend in stress reduction and increased feelings of ANSIBLE usability over time.

Social Maintenance and Psychological Support Using Virtual Worlds

In the space exploration domain, limitations in the Deep Space Network and the lack of real-time communication capabilities will impact various aspects of future long duration exploration such as a multi-year mission to Mars. One dimension of interest is the connection between flight crews and their Earth-based social support system, their family, friends, and colleagues. Studies in ground-based analogs of Isolated and Confined Environments (ICE) such as Antarctica have identified sensory deprivation and social monotony as threats to crew psychological well-being. Given the importance of behavioral health to mission success and the extreme conditions of space travel, new methods of maintaining psycho-social health and social connections to support systems are critical. In this paper we explore the use of Virtual Environments (VEs) and Virtual Agents (VAs) as tools to facilitate asynchronous human-human communication, and counteract behavioral health challenges associated with prolonged isolation and deep space exploration.

I want my virtual friends to be life size!: adapting Second Life to multi-screen projected environments

Second Life (SL) is a popular 3D online virtual world designed for human interaction (also known as a MUVE, or multi-user virtual environment). It typically supports 60--70 thousand concurrent users. The assets and physical environments within SL are easy to create and use, and the environments themselves are very much part of the human interaction experience. However, the typical means of accessing SL is through a single computer screen, which lessens the immersion that is inherent in such a rich 3D world. Because of this, the SL virtual world is a good candidate for adaptation to large scale immersive displays such as a CAVE#8482; or other multi projector systems.