Digital Puppets

Embodied virtual agents with visemes and gestures — presence without the uncanny valley.

See orbital-puppet on GitHub.

Embodied interfaces may be satisfying to people who are not adapted to 2D interfaces, or who were not part of the first wave of technology adoption. Fewer than 20% of people touch-type fluently, and there are still billions who have never used a computer. As humans we have wetware that processes faces and gestures — it can be a more powerful learning and communication mechanism even for people used to 2D interfaces.

The technical challenge is interesting by itself. Syncing mouth movement to provide a sense of presence and aliveness is tricky. Presence as a whole is conveyed by accurate emotions, breath pauses, body gestures matching conversation, blinking, facial ticks, and gaze — while avoiding the uncanny valley is a balancing act.