Scalable hybrid Avatar-Agent-Technologies for everyday social interaction in XR (HiAvA) (Completed)

The HiAvA project develops and applies new technology for multi-user interaction in socially extended reality (Social XR), mitigating the challenges of social distancing. The goal is to improve upon current video communication as well as VR/AR solutions by enabling users to engage with other, distant persons in a Social XR environment that provides a high degree of immersion and social presence, even when using hardware devices that only have limited tracking or rendering abilities. The approach is to leverage AI-based models for avatar creation and behavior simulation in order to increase scalability, immersion and comfort.

Contributions

Our group contributes research to several work packages of the project:

• A.I.-based models for speech-driven, online generation of non-verbal behavior of human avatars, in particular meaningful human-like gesticulation
• Empirical studies of social (conversational) interaction in XR
• Automatic recognition of user and interaction states to inform avatar behavior simulation

Contact

Niklas Krome
Email: nkrome(at)techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Phone: +49 521 106-12142

Duration: 01.09.2021 – 31.08.2024