Human-Agent Negotation

Human Agent Negotation in Virtual Reality

Negotiation with Virtual Humans, Visiting Research @ USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) , under the supervision of dr. Jonathan Gratch, Director for Virtual Human Research at ICT.

During my time as visiting researcher at USC Institute for Creative Technologies Sept-Dec 2016, I have worked on the implementation of the Conflict-Resolution Agent (CRA) as developed by Gratch et al. (2015), in immersive virtual reality (VR). In a within-subjects design, we explored the sense of presence and the usability of the systems are measured by means of questionnaires. The results show that there was a difference in the sense of presence, expressed in terms of involvement, awareness of the outside world and the degree to which all of participants’ senses were engaged. There was no difference in system usability, it is reasoned that this is resulting from the fact that both systems have clear advantages as well as implications. My personal goal as a visiting researcher was to gain new skills, such as hands-on with the Unity game engine, and 3D modeling of environments.