Virtual Life

In order to enhance the sense of presence within networked Virtual Environments it is important to increase the quality of physical or social interaction of participants with each other and with the environment. We beleive that this increase of quality can be achieved by realistic modeling and animation of the human body representing the participant, together with the natural behaviors of the objects in the environment. The representation of self as a realistic-looking virtual human body with natural movement helps participants not only to perceive each other and thus feel together, but also to interact with the environment in a straightforward and natural fashion. This property is further enhanced if the objects in the environment behave in a natural, expected way. In the Virtual Life Network (VLNET) system we use realistic human body representation together with a set of motor functions giving behaviors to actors and objects to reach the mentioned goals.

In order to feel the sense of presence in a virtual environment, it is important for the participants to become a part of this environment and interact with it through natural behaviors. This interaction is even more important in networked collaborative virtual environments, in which the participants need to see and interact with each other. We present the Virtual Life Network (VLNET), a joint research effort in the field of networked collaborative virtual environments at MIRALab of the University of Geneva and the Computer Graphics Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne. In VLNET each participant is represented by a virtual human actor with realistic appearance and movements similar to the actual body. Interacting with the environment through his virtual body, the participant is perceived by himself and others in a natural way. Since it is generally not possible to track all degrees of freedom of the human body in order to reproduce realistic body motion,...

Virtual environments define a new interface for networked multimedia applications. The sense of "presence" in the virtual environment is an important requirement for collaborative activities involving multiple remote users working with social interactions. Using virtual actors within the shared environment is a supporting tool for presence. In this paper, we present a shared virtual life network with virtual humans that provides a natural interface for collaborative working and we describe the bridge we realized between this 3D shared world and the Web through a system of 3D snapshots.

Abstract. The sense of presence requires that participants become part of the virtual environment and equipped with natural behaviors for interaction. This can be accomplished by representing the participants by a virtual human actor with realistic appearance and similar movements to the actual body. Current sensing devices are limited for tracking all joints of the complex human body, therefore the tracked information should be combined with motion generators and behavioral animation to interpolate the joints which are not ...

VLNET is a shared virtual life network with virtual humans that provides a natural interface forcollaborative working. Virtual actors play a key role in VLNET. Three kinds of virtual actors maycoexist in a VLNET scene: participant, guided and autonomous actors. A participant actor is a virtualcopy of the real user or participant; his movement is exactly the same as the real user. A guided actoris an actor completely controlled in real-time by the user. An autonomous actor is an actor who mayact without intervention of the user.

Virtual environments define a new interface for networked multimedia applications. The sense of "presence" in the virtual environment is an important requirement for collaborative activities involving multiple remote users working with social interactions. Using virtual actors within the shared environment is a supporting tool for presence. In this paper, we present a shared virtual life network with virtual humans that provides a natural interface for collaborative working and we describe the bridge we realized between this 3D shared world and the Web through a system of 3D snapshots.

This paper reports some activities towards artificial life research. We propose the implementation of a society of virtual mobile robots, able to perform requested tasks while behaving according to their own motivation and reasoning. Each robot is an intelligent agent that perceives the virtual environment via a simulated vision system and reacts moving its own body by driving its own wheels. The robot also communicates with other robots placed near to itself, through a simulated talking and listening (prototypical hearing) system. This feature allows them to communicate with each other, giving support for the evolution of their social skills. The conception and specification of the robots and the environment are being conducted very carefully to create an open distributed object architecture that could serve as a testbed freely available and ready to use for testing theories in some computational areas. Our intention is to test concepts in evolutionary computation, artificial life, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, cognitive neurosciences and distributed objects architectures.

This paper reports some activities towards artificial life research. We propose the implementation of a society of virtual mobile robots, able to perform requested tasks while behaving according to their own motivation and reasoning. Each robot is an intelligent agent that perceives the virtual environment via a simulated vision system and reacts moving its own body by driving its own wheels. The robot also communicates with other robots placed near to itself, through a simulated talking and listening (prototypical hearing) system. This feature allows them to communicate with each other, giving support for the evolution of their social skills. The conception and specification of the robots and the environment are being conducted very carefully to create an open distributed object architecture that could serve as a testbed freely available and ready to use for testing theories in some computational areas. Our intention is to test concepts in evolutionary computation, artificial life, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, cognitive neurosciences and distributed objects architectures.

This paper reports some activities towards artificial life research. We propose the implementation of a society of virtual mobile robots, able to perform requested tasks while behaving according to their own motivation and reasoning. Each robot is an intelligent agent that perceives the virtual environment via a simulated vision system and reacts moving its own body by driving its own wheels. The robot also communicates with other robots placed near to itself, through a simulated talking and listening (prototypical hearing) system. This feature allows them to communicate with each other, giving support for the evolution of their social skills. The conception and specification of the robots and the environment are being conducted very carefully to create an open distributed object architecture that could serve as a testbed freely available and ready to use for testing theories in some computational areas. Our intention is to test concepts in evolutionary computation, artificial life,...

The growing popularity of social networking sites (SNS) among the Internet users demands an introspection of personal and social behavior of human beings. Today 1.5 billion people across the world have their profiles in social networking sites. Everything looks nice when you create a profile on social networking site, but how you feel when someone starts blackmailing using your personal data. Your boss threatens to fire you for posting comments on SNS. You feel compulsive to check your profile during work hours. SNS becomes a reason for anxiety and addiction. It starts affecting personal relationship with spouse and family members. Such sites make private life and public life of an individual a digital document. How SNS affecting our social behavior and relationships? Are we going towards a prosperous future or a darker world of SNS? This research study tries to explore all these negative impacts of SNS on its users.

In order to enhance the sense of presence within networked Virtual Environments it is important to increase the quality of physical or social interaction of participants with each other and with the environment. We beleive that this increase of quality can be achieved by realistic modeling and animation of the human body representing the participant, together with the natural behaviors of the objects in the environment. The representation of self as a realistic-looking virtual human body with natural movement helps participants not only to ...

During the last decades, technological progress and increasing globali-za¬tion had a serious impact on people's daily life. The definitions, context and un¬derstanding of time, connection, relationships, identity, reality and place have been affected by innovations. Social media plays an important role in this process and it offers opportunities to the people, no matter where and who they are. This article will look at the relationship between young people in England using so¬cial media on daily basis and their social activity in the real life and time. Do peop¬le become more socially isolated while using the internet and social media in par¬ticular, or does frequent 'online' status make them more lonely? Do they prefer vir¬tual relationships to the real ones? Does social media affect their connectivity with the people they have relationships in a real life? The article aims to answer this questions and bring deeper insight into this issue.