Future Uses for Virtual Humans
The virtual human technology developed at the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) has been implemented in training tools for the U.S. military, virtual patients for training clinical psychologists, location-based mixed reality entertainment systems, and now as exhibit guides at the Museum of Science.
Learn More: Virtual Patients
Because they can depict life-like characters who can realistically listen and respond to questions, virtual humans can potentially be used in a variety of educational situations, including the simulation of:
- Historical figures, to accurately represent a person and make their historical relevance come alive.
- Multiple versions of a living figure, such as an expert teacher who can simultaneously mentor numerous classrooms of students in different locations.
- Lifelong learning companions that gather knowledge about you, your interests, and your life goals in order to suggest websites to visit, activities to try, museums to visit, classes to take, and more. In addition, by asking you the right questions at the right time, writing your diary entries could some day be replaced by daily conversations with your own virtual human! Learn More
- Interactive video game characters that employ virtual human technology to engage players in actual dialogue, using speech recognition, dialogue system technology, and emotional modeling to deepen the experience and make it more entertaining. The "Gunslinger" project at ICT is an example of where things may be going in the future. Learn More
- Someone from a different culture, who can prepare nervous travelers for a foreign visit by reacting to cultural differences, providing explanations for why they find something surprising or different, getting upset when an error is made, and more. ICT researchers are investigating this use in several projects. Learn More: Elect BiLAT | IGEL | ALELO
