[MUSIC] Social interaction is the most essential form of human activities. We always spend a huge chunk of our lives interacting with other people. Going out with friends, meeting with colleagues, negotiating with clients, or spending quality time with our family. Even when we watch TV or play games, we are spending time observing actors or avatars interacting with each other. >> The most traditional form of social interaction is face to face conversation. Where we use speech and also body language to communicate with another person. What we call verbal signal, speech, and non verbal signals, body language. However, nowadays the use of technology such as social media, text messaging, e-commerce, is replacing many forms of face to face interaction. We can get a sandwich from a supermarket and use self-checkout without having to speak to anyone. Or discuss and make decisions with our colleagues via email without ever meeting them. >> But even when some of the social activities were removed, or moved online, it is important that we can still express ourselves through the verbal and nonverbal channels we're most familiar with. We can replace verbal communication by typing, but nonverbal signals are more difficult to be directly translated into words. That's why we often use emoticons, the little icons which express emotions, a happy face, or a sad one with tears. >> But there were problems, first, it's hard to use this limited range of emoticons to capture all of the emotional expressions we use. Although they're a set of universally recognized basic emotions, we are all unique in how we express ourselves. By trying to digitize our emotional expressions, we risk losing our personal identity. Second, interaction implies it's reciprocal, it's a real time exchange of information with another person. In a face to face interaction, as we are talking, we are also listening, and as we express our emotions, we are also observing. Often, before I finish my point, I already know if my friends agree or disagree with me, from their face and body language. >> Online communication often oversimplifies or removes real time social signal exchanges. For instance, you might send an email to your colleagues today, and they will only read and reply to it tomorrow. As a result, this can be unsatisfactory and even frustrating for many. >> Social interaction in virtual reality sits in between real and digital social interaction. And often can be a mixture of both, depending on the specific application. >> Many social VR applications are about the ability to interact with another person in real time. In this case, the aim is to capture, as much as possible, our expressions and apply those to the digital representations of ourselves, our avatars. So we can have high fidelity social interactions, where we can not only hear each other's words, but also sense their emotions through their nonverbal cues. >> There are a lot of things that can go wrong, we need to have a good microphone to capture what the other person is saying, and a good set of headphones to play this in real time. The same applies to our facial expression and body language. We'll need to capture these nonverbal cues to animate the virtual reality representation of ourselves in real time. This is by no means a straightforward procedure. >> And in virtual reality, this person you're interacting with does not have to be a real person. It can be an autonomous agent, whose behavior is generated by computer algorithms. And just like other human beings, they should be able to understand what we say. And feel our emotions through our facial expressions, and body language, and respond to us in real time. >> And in order to this, we'll need the power of machine learning and AI. And it turns out that although machines can be very good at playing chess, they're not particularly good at socializing with human beings. Having said that, there are little tricks that you can play, to give the illusion that the computer-driven virtual humans are responding to you in some ways. Just like the other illusions you could get in virtual reality. >> So in this course, we'll teach you everything you need to know to get started in designing and implementing your own social VR applications. We will teach you the theory and design principles behind virtual characters, what to consider for different types of applications. And most importantly, the unique features of VR which make it a useful tool for social interaction. >> You'll also get your hands dirty making your own social VR application. We'll show you how to implement simple tasks, including how to import a virtual character into Unity, how to put some basic animation on them. And how to create the illusion that the computer-driven virtual humans are responding to you as if they were real [MUSIC]
