Locomotion with Virtual Agents in the Realm of Social Virtual Reality

My research focuses on social locomotion of computer-controlled, human-like, virtual agents in virtual reality applications. Two main areas are covered in the literature: a) user-agent-dynamics in, e.g., pedestrian scenarios and b) pure inter-agent-dynamics. However, joint locomotion of a social group consisting of a user and one to several virtual agents has not been investigated yet. I intend to close this gap by contributing an algorithmic model of an agent's behavior during social locomotion. In addition, I plan to evaluate the effects of the resulting agent's locomotion patterns on a user's perceived degree of immersion, comfort, as well as social presence.