Different levels of interaction in a virtual environment

Abstract

The widespread use of electronic devices in the daily tasks has motivated the research in user interfaces. The conversational user interfaces using virtual characters are starting to be widely used in order to improve the human-computer communication, due to the illusion of having a conversation with a real human. Our approach is based on having an avatar as the main interaction element in the virtual environment. Thanks to the virtual characters we can “connect” all the components in the system, such as user, VE and avatars, and having a high level of interaction. In one hand, the user can interact with the avatar and with the environment. In the other hand, the avatars can interact with the user or behave in an autonomous mode, interacting between them. Having this kind of interaction implies the development of animation techniques, path finding, collision detection, human behaviours, etc. The techniques implemented for achieving the different levels of interaction are also explained in this paper.