Avatar modeling: a telepresence study with natural user interface

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores

Virtual environments are an increasing trend in today’s society. In this context, the avatar concept appears as the representation of the user in the virtual world. Nevertheless the relationship between avatars and human beings lacks on empirical studies in what concerns their interaction. Based on this motivation, this work aimed at studying how the morphology’s modeling and dynamics affect the control between the avatar and its user. An experiment was conducted to measure telepresence and ownership on the participants while using a natural user interface to control the avatar. In that experiment, affordances were used as behavioral assessment on the virtual environment as the user controls the avatar when it passes through apertures of various sizes. The results show that in virtual environments, the feelings of telepresence and ownership are greater when the kinematics and the avatar proportions are closer to the user.