The DOI matches its Crossref record; 36 of the 39 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Does a Digital Assistant Need a Body? The Influence of Visual Embodiment and Social Behavior on the Perception of Intelligent Virtual Agents in AR
Abstract
Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) are becoming part of our everyday life, thanks to artificial intelligence technology and Internet of Things devices. For example, users can control their connected home appliances through natural voice commands to the IVA. However, most current-state commercial IVAs, such as Amazon Alexa, mainly focus on voice commands and voice feedback, and lack the ability to provide non-verbal cues which are an important part of social interaction. Augmented Reality (AR) has the potential to overcome this challenge by providing a visual embodiment of the IVA. In this paper we investigate how visual embodiment and social behaviors influence the perception of the IVA. We hypothesize that a user's confidence in an IVA's ability to perform tasks is improved when imbuing the agent with a human body and social behaviors compared to the agent solely depending on voice feedback. In other words, an agent's embodied gesture and locomotion behavior exhibiting awareness of the surrounding real world or exerting influence over the environment can improve the perceived social presence with and confidence in the agent. We present a human-subject study, in which we evaluated the hypothesis and compared different forms of IVAs with speech, gesturing, and locomotion behaviors in an interactive AR scenario. The results show support for the hypothesis with measures of confidence, trust, and social presence. We discuss implications for future developments in the field of IVAs.
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“For example, in the context of both autonomous vehicles and virtual agents, people showed more trust in AIs with human characteristics than without [41-43].”
From Anthropomorphism in AI: hype and fallacy (2024) · cites this paper as [42]
Citations
Cites
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Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments
Slater, M. (2009) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2009.0138 · Cited by 2,691
Toward a More Robust Theory and Measure of Social Presence: Review and Suggested Criteria
Biocca, F. A., Harms, C., & Burgoon, J. K. (2003) · PRESENCE Virtual and Augmented Reality · doi:10.1162/105474603322761270 · Cited by 2,365
Trust in a specific technology: An investigation of its components and measures
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Nowak, K. L., & Biocca, F. (2003) · Presence - Teleoperators and Virtual Environments · doi:10.1162/105474603322761289 · Cited by 1,162
It's only a computer: virtual humans increase willingness to disclose
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Interpersonal Distance in Immersive Virtual Environments
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Self-citationEquilibrium Theory Revisited: Mutual Gaze and Personal Space in Virtual Environments
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Self-citationThe impact of animated interface agents: a review of empirical research
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- bos, 2002, Rich Media Helps Trust Development, Proceedings of ACM CHI, 135
- amores, 2012, Smart Avatars: Using Avatars to Interact With Objects, Proceedings of ACM CHI, 1
- lombard, 2009, Measuring presence: The temple presence inventory, International Workshop on Presence, 1
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Trust in AI and Its Role in the Acceptance of AI Technologies
Choung, H., David, P., & Ross, A. (2023) · International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction · doi:10.1080/10447318.2022.2050543 · Cited by 963
“Studies have found that the embodiment of an agent can increase trust because users are better able to perceive its social presence (Kim et al., 2018; Shin, 2021c; Waytz et al., 2014).”
BackgroundRevisiting Trends in Augmented Reality Research: A Review of the 2nd Decade of ISMAR (2008–2017)
Kim, K., Billinghurst, M., Bruder, G., Duh, H. B., & Welch, G. (2018) · IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics · doi:10.1109/tvcg.2018.2868591 · Cited by 335
Self-citationSocial interaction in augmented reality
Miller, M. R., Jun, H., Herrera, F., Villa, J. Y., Welch, G., & Bailenson, J. N. (2019) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0216290 · Cited by 235
Self-citationA Review of Trust in Artificial Intelligence: Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Future Directions
Lockey, S., Gillespie, N. A., Holm, D., & Someh, I. (2021) · Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) · doi:10.24251/hicss.2021.664 · Cited by 233
The Effect of Avatar Appearance on Social Presence in an Augmented Reality Remote Collaboration
Yoon, B., Kim, H.-I., Lee, G., Billinghurst, M., & Woo, W. (2019) · IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR) · doi:10.1109/vr.2019.8797719 · Cited by 204
Metadata
- Authors
- Kim, K., Boelling, L., Haesler, S., Bailenson, J., Bruder, G., & Welch, G. F.
- Affiliations
- University of Central Florida (US)
- University of Würzburg (DE)
- Stanford University (US)
- Venue
- 2018 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR)
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Published
- 2018-10
- Pages
- 105-114
- ISSN
- 1554-7868 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2909822833
- Cited by
- 206
- References
- 39
- Citations by year
- 2026: 23 · 2025: 44 · 2024: 32 · 2023: 26 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 23 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 4
- FWCI
- 26.89
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Proceedings - International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, ISMAR (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Augmented Reality Applications
- Keywords
- intelligent virtual agents, augmented reality, social presence, user confidence, gesturing, locomotor activity, nonverbal cues, voice feedback, virtual assistants, human-agent interaction
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