Research News & Events

The virtual humans industry is growing very fast, as predicted the futurist Erwin van Lun and independent research companies such as Gartner or CCM Benchmark. Nevertheless, many advanced research projects, 3D human design methods or modeling techniques are not commonly known. Therefore, we would like to present three extraordinary state of the art examples of humanlike conversational artificial intelligence. They are expected to be adopted soon by the virtual humans industry.

Researchers from Human Centered Multimedia at the University of Augsburg developed a virtual character which is capable of recognizing and displaying the emotion of a user.

Virtual agents’  reasoning and actions are tightly connected with their awareness ability helping to relate to the environment during a conversation. Researchers invented the combination of virtual reality and artificial intelligence techniques to simulate living conversational agents being aware of themselves, the virtual world around them, and other virtual beings existing in that environment.

Conversational virtual humans are nowadays applied to the field of neuroscience, psychiatry and psychology. The technology has evolved to a point where researchers may begin developing mental health applications that make use of virtual reality patients. Human patients with acute neurological illnesses are often confused and unable to cooperate with clinicians during medical consultations. Imagine a simulated training with virtual humans having real mental disorders, willing to talk to their doctors, and sharing their emotions!

Virtual human Spike has its own beliefs and values. Additionally, it exhibits rude, pessimistic and confrontational behavior. Even a very cheerful person is not able to convince this virtual agent to chill out, relax or assimilate optimistic outlook. Would you like that Spike became your conversational friend?

Don’t be surprised if your child creates his/her first conversational agent earlier than you! Researchers from DevTech Research Group at Tufts University made it possible…