1. Embodiment, Cognition and
Intention Preservation
Anthony Steed
University College London, London, UK
HITLab, Christchurch, New Zealand
Microsoft Research, Redmond, USA
2. AI & VR
Steed & Slater
VRAIS 96
Giunchi, James & Steed
Expressive 2018
3.
4. • Embodiment and how to achieve it
• Cognition and how it should depend on body
schema
• Intention preservation and how this is a social
construct
6. Response to Threat
• At a specific time, the
lamp falls over
• The ball and hole have
been pre-cued so that
the hand is in the
region where the lamp
falls
• Looking for a stress
response
Yuan, Steed, et al., 2010
10. Result - Letter Recall
• In the self-avatar condition,
participants remembered
28% more letter pairs when
gesturing than when not
gesturing
• In the without a self-avatar
condition, the difference
between the two gesture
conditions was not
significant
Self-avatar
Gesture
Allowed
Error
Bars:
95% CI
Not allowed
Self-avatarNo self-avatar
MeanProportionofcorrectly
rememberedletterpairs
0.80
0.60
0.40
0.20
0.00
0.49 0.51
0.44
0.72
12. • Challenge 1: how to learn about the user to create
an embodiment, visual quality, behavior, gestures,
clothing, belongings
• The brain is highly plastic BUT also very good at
noticing discrepancies
• High individual variance in reaction to self-
representation
14. • Challenge 2: learn how the user interacts with the
world and replace absent cues appropriately.
Dexterity of hands seems to be a specific
challenge
• At the current time, VR is failing to reproduce
certain real-world behaviours
• However, knowledge that something isn’t real
doesn’t necessarily change their behaviour
23. • Challenge 3: intention builds upon knowledge of
the user and is a social construct
• There is complex meaning in collaborative
behaviours, can we interpret it and support it
transparently