2014 Volume 16 Issue 4 Pages 303-312
In this study, we focus on consensus building communication via embodied avatars with various computer generated (CG) objects such as plants in cyber space. By providing a communication environment in which not only avatars but also CG objects around the avatars are related to speakers in cyber space, it is expected that the mutually shared sense of unity and interaction will increase and human communication will become more efficient. We developed embodied communication systems including speakers' avatars and speech-driven embodied entrainment objects using plant or shadow-figure models. In addition, we confirmed the effectiveness of the communication system which presents entrainment reaction using a plant model as virtual audiences in an experiment under free conversation and role-playing conversation. For consensus building from different opinions of speakers, we can expect the system to provide confidence to speakers about their own opinions using the interactive CG audiences, because speakers can experience the agreeable responses from the objects. We thus conduct two communication experiments in consensus building using speech-driven embodied entrainment plant objects or shadow-figure objects. Virtual audiences influenced the decisions of subjects; male subjects were influenced by plant objects and female subjects by shadow-figure objects. The effectiveness of the proposed system was confirmed in the study.
