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This paper summaries a case study conducted by Meetingroom and Bank of Ireland in exploring the use of virtual reality to conduct meetings online. The case study was to compare virtual reality meetings to traditional video teleconferencing software. The results point to the improved feelings of presence, closeness, and arousal for virtual reality environments, but also demonstrate a difference in the experience for female and male participants. In particular, the use of avatars instead of real-life video images of the participants was preferred by female participants which point to a possible de-biasing ability for virtual reality environments.

This paper examines the use of Virtual Reality to conduct meetings online and compares them with an approach using traditional video teleconferencing software. The research was conducted using Virtual Reality meeting software and Skype for Business as test environments to compare a Virtual Reality meeting versus a Video conferencing environment. The results point to the improved feelings of presence, closeness, and arousal for Virtual Reality environments, but also demonstrate a difference in the experience for female and male participants. In particular, the use of Avatar’s instead of real-life video images of the participants was preferred by female participants which points to a possible de-biasing ability for Virtual Reality environments. The results also indicate a need to explore different interfaces designs and discuss the lessons learnt from the historical adoption of technology by the financial services community.

Over the last number of years, multiple research projects have begun to create augmented reality (AR) applications that use augmented reality agents, or AuRAs, as their principle interaction and development paradigm. This paper aims to address this new and distinct field of AuRAs by asking three questions: why should AuRAs be researched, when are they a useful paradigm, and how can they be developed? The first question explores the motivation behind applying AuRAs to AR. Specifically, it investigates whether AuRAs are purely an interaction paradigm, or whether they can also serve as a development paradigm, by outlining in which circumstances it is appropriate for a project to use AuRAs and where their addition would only add unnecessary complexity. A navigational experiment, performed in simulated AR, explores the second question of when AuRAs can be a useful concept in AR applications. Results from this experiment suggest that an embodied virtual character allows for faster navigation along a shorter route than directional arrows or marking the target with an AR "bubble". An exploration of the limitations of the simulated AR environment illuminates how faithfully the experiment recreated the environmental challenges that AuRAs can help to address. Finally, the question of how to develop such applications is addressed through the introduction of the agent factory augmented reality toolkit that allows the rapid prototyping of such applications. Results from a usability study on the toolkit are also presented.

In recent years, an increasing number of Mixed Reality (MR) applications have been developed using agent technology—both for the underlying software and as an interface metaphor. However, no unifying field or theory currently exists that can act as a common frame of reference for these varied works. As a result, much duplication of research is evidenced in the literature. This paper seeks to fill this important gap by outlining ‘‘for the first time’’ a formal field of research that has hitherto gone unacknowledged, namely the field of Mixed Reality Agents (MiRAs), which are defined as agents embodied in a Mixed Reality environment. Based on this definition, a taxonomy is offered that classifies MiRAs along three axes: agency, based on the weak and strong notions outlined by Wooldridge and Jennings (1995); corporeal presence, which describes the degree of virtual or physical representation (body) of a MiRA; and interactive capacity, which characterises its ability to sense and act on the virtual and physical environment. Furthermore, this paper offers the first comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art of MiRA research and places each project within the proposed taxonomy. Finally, common trends and future directions for MiRA research are discussed. By defining Mixed Reality Agents as a formal field, establishing a common taxonomy, and retrospectively placing existing MiRA projects within it, future researchers can effectively position their research within this landscape, thereby avoiding duplication and fostering reuse and interoperability. Science Foundation Ireland au,ti,ke,SB-09/09/2011

Traditionally, social interaction research has concentrated on either fully virtually embodied agents (e.g. embodied conversational agents) or fully physically embodied agents (e.g. robots). For some time, however, both areas have started augmenting their agents’ capabilities for social interaction using ubiquitous and intelligent environments. We are placing different agent systems for social interaction along Milgram’s Reality-Virtuality Continuum—according to the degree they are embodied in a physical, virtual or mixed reality environment—and show systems that follow the next logical step in this progression, namely social interaction in the middle of Milgram’s continuum, that is, agents richly embodied in the physical and virtual world. This paper surveys the field of social interaction research with embodied agents with a particular view towards their embodiment forms and highlights some of the advantages and issues associated with the very recent field of social interaction with mixed reality agents. Science Foundation Ireland

Autonomically managing energy within the home is a formidable challenge, as any solution needs to interoperate with a decidedly heterogeneous network of sensors and appliances, not just in terms of technologies and protocols but also by managing smart as well as “dumb” appliances. Furthermore, as studies have shown that simply providing energy usage feedback to homeowners is inadequate in realising long-term behavioural change, autonomic energy management has the potential to deliver concrete and lasting energy savings without the need for user interventions. However, this necessitates that such interventions be performed in an intelligent and context-aware fashion, all the while taking into account system as well as user constraints and preferences. Thus, this chapter proposes the augmentation of home area networks with autonomic computing capabilities. Such networks seek to support opportunistic decision-making pertaining to the effective energy management within the home by seamlessly integrating a range of off-the-shelf sensor technologies with a software infrastructure for deliberation, activation, and visualisation.

Human-Robot Interaction poses significant research challenges. Recent research suggests that rsonalisation and individualisation are key factors for establishing lifelong human-robot relationships. This raises difficulties as roboticists seek to incorporate robots into the digital society where an creasing amount of human activities relies on digital technologies and ubiquitous infrastructures. In essence, a robot may be perceived as either an embedded or mobile artefact in an arbitrary environment that must be interacted with in a seamless and intuitive fashion. This chapter explores some of the ternative ways and the design ssues to achieve these objectives. Specifically, it describes a new system, which we call Mixed Reality Agent (MiRA) Chameleon, that combines the latest advancements on agent-based ubiquitous architectures with mixed reality technology to deliver personalised and ubiquitous robot agents.

Endowing robots with a social interface is often costly and difficult. Virtual characters on the other hand are comparatively cheap and well equipped but suffer from other difficulties, most notably their inability to interact with the physical world. This paper details our wearable solution to combining physical robots and virtual characters into a mixed reality agent (MiRA) through mixed reality visualisation. It describes a pilot study demonstrating our system, and showing how such a technique can offer a viable alternative cost effective approach to enabling a rich social interface for human-robot interaction.

This paper contests that Mixed Reality (MR) offers a potential solution in achieving transferability between Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Human Robot Interaction (HRI). Virtual characters (possibly of a robotic genre) can offer highly expressive interfaces that are as convincing as a human, are comparably cheap and can be easily adapted and personalized. We introduce the notion of a mixed reality agent, i.e. an agent consisting of a physical robotic body and a virtual avatar displayed upon it. We realized an augmented reality interface with a Head-Mounted Display (HMD) in order to interact with such systems and conducted a pilot study to demonstrate the usefulness of mixed reality agents in human-robot collaborative tasks.