Cultural Diversity for Virtual Characters

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XIV

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Birgit Endrass

   Pages 1-10

3. Theoretical Background

   • Birgit Endrass

   Pages 11-47

4. Related Work

   • Birgit Endrass

   Pages 49-79

5. Empirical Background

   • Birgit Endrass

   Pages 81-111

6. Conceptual Design and Technical Realization

   • Birgit Endrass

   Pages 113-152

7. Evaluation of Behavioral Aspects

   • Birgit Endrass

   Pages 153-168

8. Generalization of the Approach

   • Birgit Endrass

   Pages 169-179

9. Contributions and Future Work

   • Birgit Endrass

   Pages 181-188

10. Back Matter

    Pages 189-237

    PDF

Culture plays a crucial role in our lives. Depending on our cultural background, we judge on and react to everything that we encounter. Subtle differences in behavior can lead to misunderstandings or even culture shock. In a similar manner, virtual characters can be declined by certain user groups when showing culturally inappropriate behavior. But how can social aspects such as culture be integrated into the behavioral models of virtual characters? Birgit Endrass addresses this question by carrying out a hybrid approach that is based on theoretical background from the social sciences as well as a multimodal corpus analysis, and exemplified the approach for the German and Japanese cultures. For this purpose, different methods from artificial intelligence and multiagent systems are applied and simulated with a virtual character system.

• Behavioral Aspects across Cultures
• Behavioral Models
• Cultural Background for Virtual Characters
• Cultural Diversity for Virtual Characters
• Formalizing Social Background

• Human Centered Multimedia, Augsburg University, Augsburg, Germany

  Birgit Endrass

Birgit Endrass is a faculty member at Augsburg University, Germany, where she obtained her doctoral degree in 2012. During her PhD, she was supported by a grant from the Elite Network Bavaria (Elitenetzwerk Bayern). Her doctoral thesis received the Research Award of Augsburg University (Wissenschaftspreis der Universität Augsburg), and the prestigious IFAAMAS-12 Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award.

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