A method for creating interactive, user-resembling avatars

Virtual reality (VR) applications have disseminated throughout several fields, with a special quest for immersion. The avatar is one of the key constituents of immersive applications, and avatar resemblance can provoke diverse emotional responses from the user. Yet a lot a virtual reality systems st...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Igor Macedo Silva, Renan C. Moioli
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: PeerJ Inc. 2017-07-01
Series:PeerJ Computer Science
Subjects:
Online Access:https://peerj.com/articles/cs-128.pdf
Description
Summary:Virtual reality (VR) applications have disseminated throughout several fields, with a special quest for immersion. The avatar is one of the key constituents of immersive applications, and avatar resemblance can provoke diverse emotional responses from the user. Yet a lot a virtual reality systems struggle to implement real life-like avatars. In this work, we propose a novel method for creating interactive, user-resembling avatars using available commercial hardware and software. Avatar visualization is possible with a point-cloud or a contiguous polygon surface, and avatar interactions with the virtual scenario happens through a body joint-approximation for contact. In addition, the implementation could be easily extended to other systems and its modular architecture admits improvement both on visualization and physical interactions. The code is under Apache License 2.0 and is freely available as Supplemental Information 1 in this article.
ISSN:2376-5992