Socially Aware Virtual Characters: The Social Signal of Smiles [Social Sciences]

摘要

At first, machines were mainlyr used to solve complex mathematicalr problems. Today,r they often embody morer and more roles typicallyr endowed by humans, such as a tutor in ar virtual learning class or an assistant forr virtual task realization. Moreover, the paradigmr highlighted in [1] reveals that ther user’s relation with the computer is intrinsicallyr social, with high similarities comparedr to interpersonal relationships. Forr instance, people have no problem usingr communicative means (verbal and nonverbalr behavior) to interact with artificialr entities and apply polite rules. One particularlyr interesting aspect of the human–r machine interaction is the bidirectionalityr of the relation: users exhibit social behaviorsr to the computer, and the machine’sr behavior affects users. Reeves and Nass [1]r have shown that people tend to reactr naturally and socially to computers, asr they would do to another person. In suchr a human–machine interaction, which canr be seen as a particular social context withr users sensitive to the computer behavior,r the development of socially aware virtualr characters appears fundamental.