Research
Virtual Peer
This work focused on the
design and evaluation of an interactive virtual bicyclist for an immersive
bicycling simulator. The goal of our work is to develop a programmatically
controlled peer to ride with a human subject for the purpose of studying how
social interactions influence riding behavior.
The peer is controlled through a combination of reactive controllers
that determine the gross motion of the virtual bicycle, action-based
controllers that animate the virtual bicyclist and generate verbal
behaviors, and a keyboard interface that allows an experimenter to initiate
the virtual bicyclist’s actions during the course of an experiment.
The virtual bicyclist’s repertoire of behaviors includes road
following, riding alongside the human rider, stopping at intersections, and
crossing intersections through specified gaps.
The virtual cyclist engages the human subject through gaze, gesture,
and verbal interactions.
We conducted a pilot study to examine how 10- and 12-year-old children interact with a peer cyclist. Results of the pilot study suggest that, when children rode alongside the peer, there was a significant influence on the size of the gaps taken as well as time left to spare between the participant and the trailing car in the crossed gap.
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