Descripción:

Although companion virtual agents (CVAs) are increasingly adopted to support well-being, interaction patterns between adults and CVAs remain underexplored. This study examines how users engage with CVAs over time, exploring conversation patterns, interaction frequency, attitudes, and emotional responses over a seven-day period. Twenty-four adults engaged with a GPT-4-powered embodied CVA daily, discussing topics from personal interests to emotional reflections. Quantitative measures, including loneliness and affect scales, revealed no significant reduction in loneliness but noted decreases in positive affect and nervousness. Qualitative analysis highlighted evolving conversational dynamics, with participants shifting from exploratory questions to more reflective and personal discussions. Participants appreciated the agent’s ability to engage in fluid and meaningful conversations. However, participants also noted shortcomings, including limited recall and occasional conversational unnaturalness. These findings inform the design of CVAs, emphasizing the need for adaptive conversational strategies, enhanced emotional responsiveness, and improved memory systems to foster meaningful connections.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction

Descripción:

This paper presents the process and results of porting the Succinct Data Structure Library 2.0 (SDSL-lite), a robust and well-established open-source C++11 library, to Android platforms. The resulting library, called SDSL-Mobile, implements space-efficient data structures, including wavelet trees, compressed suffix arrays, and bit vectors, which are essential for handling large datasets in domains such as bioinformatics and information retrieval. Although originally designed for desktop environments, the library is extended to Android using the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) to enable integration into mobile platforms. Functionality is evaluated by implementing wavelet forests within an Android application, and performance is compared against a desktop implementation. The results demonstrate the feasibility of deploying succinct data structures on mobile devices, highlighting new possibilities for advanced data processing in resource-constrained environments.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: SoftwareX

Descripción:

Prior research has highlighted users’ preferences for embodiment when interacting with virtual agents in augmented reality headsets. However, open questions remain regarding users’ preferences towards agent placement and gaze direction. In our study, we asked 48 adults to wear the Microsoft HoloLens 2 and find objects in a hidden object game with the help of embodied agents. We examined four distinct agent configurations for both male and female agents: a human-size agent standing beside participants, a human-size agent sitting beside participants, a small desk agent facing the screen, and a small desk agent facing the participant. Overall, participants preferred male over female virtual agents when receiving assistance, and no consistent preference emerged regarding the agents’ position or gaze direction. From our results, we build upon existing guidelines for designing better virtual agents for AR with headsets.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: Proceedings of the 51st Graphics Interface Conference 2025