Personajes con presencia social y emocional en videojuegos de realidad virtual
Loading...
Official URL
Full text at PDC
Publication date
2022
Authors
Advisors (or tutors)
Editors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Citations
Exportar
Citation
Abstract
La Realidad Virtual se ha convertido en un sector en auge tanto en aplicaciones de arte y entretenimiento como en medios de comunicación social, siempre con ese “metaverso” en el horizonte que las grandes empresas se han propuesto alcanzar. Para lograr una interacción social plena es necesario que los personajes que habitan esos entornos virtuales posean lo que se denomina “presencia social y emocional”, es decir, que sean capaces de imitar el comportamiento de los seres humanos al relacionarse, a nivel de expresiones y gestos corporales que comunican ideas y emociones.
En el caso de los videojuegos no sólo es necesario que los personajes controlados por el jugador tengan estas capacidades expresivas, sino que también los personajes no jugadores, controlados por una inteligencia artificial, deben reaccionar de una forma creíble a los eventos que se produzcan en el entorno virtual y al comportamiento de los demás habitantes.
El objetivo de este proyecto es extender un armazón de inteligencia artificial que actualmente permite desarrollar personajes para videojuegos de realidad virtual con presencia social, convirtiéndolo en una herramienta más completa que también les permite expresar emociones y mostrar su personalidad con gestos y otros comportamientos reconocibles dentro del juego.
Como principal contribución se ha mejorado y publicado una extensión de Behavior Designer, un sistema de árboles de comportamiento para Unity, que había sido desarrollada en un trabajo anterior. La nueva herramienta se llama VR NPC y con ella cualquier desarrollador puede dar forma a sus propios personajes para realidad virtual, incluyendo la componente emocional. Para probar su eficacia se ha utilizado un experimento de tipo Prueba A/B con dos pequeños grupos de jugadores y un escenario de ejemplo, del género Sala de Escape, que cuenta con un personaje no jugador creado con nuestra herramienta.
Virtual Reality has become a booming sector both in art and entertainment applications and in social media, always with that “metaverse” on the horizon that large companies have set out to achieve. To achieve a full social interaction it is necessary that the characters that inhabit these virtual environments possess what is called “social and emotional presence”, that is to say, that they are able to imitate the behavior of human beings when interacting, at the level of expressions and body gestures that communicate ideas and emotions. In the case of video games, not only do the player-controlled characters need to have these expressive capabilities, but also the non-player characters, controlled by an artificial intelligence, must react in a believable way to the events occurring in the virtual environment and to the behavior of the other inhabitants. The goal of this project is to extend an artificial intelligence framework that currently allows developing characters for virtual reality video games with social presence, turning it into a more complete tool that also allows them to express emotions and show their personality with gestures and other recognizable in-game behaviors. As a main contribution, an extension of Behavior Designer, a behavior tree system for Unity, which had been developed in a previous work, has been improved and published. The new tool is called VR NPC and with it any developer can shape their own characters for virtual reality, including the emotional component. To assess its effectiveness, an A/B Test experiment has been used with two small groups of players and an example scenario, of the Escape Room genre, featuring a non-player character created with our tool.
Virtual Reality has become a booming sector both in art and entertainment applications and in social media, always with that “metaverse” on the horizon that large companies have set out to achieve. To achieve a full social interaction it is necessary that the characters that inhabit these virtual environments possess what is called “social and emotional presence”, that is to say, that they are able to imitate the behavior of human beings when interacting, at the level of expressions and body gestures that communicate ideas and emotions. In the case of video games, not only do the player-controlled characters need to have these expressive capabilities, but also the non-player characters, controlled by an artificial intelligence, must react in a believable way to the events occurring in the virtual environment and to the behavior of the other inhabitants. The goal of this project is to extend an artificial intelligence framework that currently allows developing characters for virtual reality video games with social presence, turning it into a more complete tool that also allows them to express emotions and show their personality with gestures and other recognizable in-game behaviors. As a main contribution, an extension of Behavior Designer, a behavior tree system for Unity, which had been developed in a previous work, has been improved and published. The new tool is called VR NPC and with it any developer can shape their own characters for virtual reality, including the emotional component. To assess its effectiveness, an A/B Test experiment has been used with two small groups of players and an example scenario, of the Escape Room genre, featuring a non-player character created with our tool.
Description
Trabajo de Fin de Grado en Ingeniería Informática, Facultad de Informática UCM, Departamento de Ingeniería del Software e Inteligencia Artificial, Curso 2021/2022.