Influence of agent behaviour on human-virtual agent body interaction

Abstract

This paper describes influence of different types of agent’s behaviour in a social human-virtual agent gesture interaction experiment. The interaction was described to participants as a game with the goal of imitating the agent’s slow upper-body movements, and where new subtle movements can be proposed by both the participant and the agent. As we are interested only in body movements, simple virtual agent was built and displayed at a local exhibition, and we asked visitors one by one to play the game. During the interaction, the agent’s behaviour varied from subject to subject, and we observed their responses. Interesting observations have been drawn from the experiment and it seems that only a small variation in the agent’s behaviour and synchronization can lead to a significantly different feel of the game in the participants.