Frequently, game characters have abilities that conform to the expectations of their gender, this correlation between character abilities and gender has not been fully explored. Previous research has identified that throughout various media, females are represented as secondary and submissive characters, this representation can affect the way that women are treated in real life. This impact has been found to influence their decision to pursue studies in a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) field. In this research, we intended to explore whether the gender of a character has an impact on their in-game mechanics and abilities. Our research finds that there are differences here, namely, male characters are more likely to have abilities which enable them to be self-sufficient, whereas female characters have more abilities for aiding other champions in-game, inherently placing them into a submissive role. This paper provides insights on gender representation in Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games from a novel perspective and discusses the impact on in-game experiences.

This discussion paper introduces the concept of devolving digital policing to members of virtual communities. A motivation is presented that highlights some of the issues faced when trying to police digital content and virtual communities. This is followed by a case study where the the monitoring and enforcement of video games communities has been devolved to community members. We conclude by introducing the concept of a Virtual Police Community Support Officer, where trusted members of specific virtual communities could work with the police online.

Visuo-haptic feedback is an important aspect of virtual reality experiences, with several previous works investigating its benefits and effects. A key aspect of this domain is congruency of crossmodal feedback and how it affects users. However, an important sub-domain which has received surprisingly little focus is visuo-haptic congruency in an interactive multisensory setting. This is especially important given that multisensory integration is crucial to player immersion in the context of virtual reality video games. In this paper, we attempt to address this lack of research. To achieve this, a total of 50 participants played a virtual reality racing game with either congruent or incongruent visuo-haptic feedback. Specifically, these users engaged in a driving simulator with physical gear shift interfaces, with one treatment group using a stick-shift gearbox, and the other using a paddle-shift setup. The virtual car they drove (A Formula Rookie race car) was only visually congruent with the stick-shift setup. A motion simulator was also used to provide synchronous vestibular cues and diversify the range of modalities in multisensory integration. The racing simulator used was Project CARS 2, one of the world's most popular commercial racing simulators. Our findings showed no significant differences between the groups in measures of user presence or in-game performance, counter to previous work regarding visuo-haptic congruency. However, the Self-evaluation of Performance PQ subscale was notably close to significance. Our results can be used to better inform games and simulation developers, especially those targeting virtual reality.

Recent years have seen significant developments in Artificial Intelligence and we are now beginning to see some applications applied to sexual technologies. This has led to certain individuals and groups calling for a ban on the development of artificial sexual companions or “sexbots”. This is largely due to fears that commercialising sex in this way could could re-enforce existing gender inequalities, and sexual objectification. We argue that one possible risk mitigation strategy could be to develop ethical safeguards into sexual robots. In this paper we explore the problem of implementing artificial ethical agents through a review of the relevant literature. We begin by exploring the motivation to the problem, and the science fiction that has inspired it. Following this, the practical, and philosophical implementation challenges are discussed before providing an overview of the current state of the art. The paper concludes by introducing the grand challenges of the field.

Navigating a powered wheelchair and avoiding collisions is often a daunting task for new wheelchair users. It takes time and practice to gain the coordination needed to become a competent driver and this can be even more of a challenge for someone with a disability. We present a cost-effective virtual reality (VR) application that takes advantage of consumer level VR hardware. The system can be easily deployed in an assessment centre or for home use, and does not depend on a specialized high-end virtual environment such as a Powerwall or CAVE. This paper reviews previous work that has used virtual environments technology for training tasks, particularly wheelchair simulation. We then describe the implementation of our own system and the first validation study carried out using thirty three able bodied volunteers. The study results indicate that at a significance level of 5 percent then there is an improvement in driving skills from the use of our VR system. We thus have the potential to develop the competency of a wheelchair user whilst avoiding the risks inherent to training in the real world. However, the occurrence of cybersickness is a particular problem in this application that will need to be addressed.

Visualizations are nowadays appearing in popular media and are used everyday in the workplace. This democratisation of visualization challenges educators to develop effective learning strategies, in order to train the next generation of creative visualization specialists. There is high demand for skilled individuals who can analyse a problem, consider alternative designs, develop new visualizations, and be creative and innovative. Our three-stage framework, leads the learner through a series of tasks, each designed to develop different skills necessary for coming up with creative, innovative, effective, and purposeful visualizations. For that, we get the learners to create an explanatory visualization of an algorithm of their choice. By making an algorithm choice, and by following an active-learning and project-based strategy, the learners take ownership of a particular visualization challenge. They become enthusiastic to develop good results and learn different creative skills on their learning journey.

This paper presents recent additions to our Wheelchair-VR application, in particular the use of different drive configurations. We have previously shown that Wheelchair-VR can be used to improve driving skills. Here we consider the utility of the application in allowing users who are in the process of purchasing or upgrading a wheelchair to experience different configurations and options in a cost-effective virtual environment. A preliminary study is presented, which suggests that this approach can be effective.

In this paper we use grammar-directed procedural content generation (PCG) techniques to develop folklore; based on the seven basic story plots, for a simulated religion. A hierarchy of values for a simulated community was first generated. Using these values, a variety of deities were procedurally generated, each with their own reflected values and persona. A Context-Free Grammar is then traversed in order to generate fables appropriate for each deities persona. The intention of this work is to generate fables which can be used to contextualize a given simulated culture's beliefs.

In this paper we present a model for procedurally generating virtual settlements populated with roads, land parcels and buildings. Our model improves on existing research by considering historical influence on settlement growth. To do this, an interactive time-line is used, allowing for a designer to specify a number of architectural periods. These architectural periods are then used in the generation process, giving the designer a robust tool to interactively generate photo-realistic urban scenes. Our results show that a variety of settlement types and sizes can be generated. In addition, we demonstrate that road patterns within real-world settlements can be created using our system.

Sketching designs has been shown to be a useful way of planning and considering alternative solutions. The use of lo-fidelity prototyping, especially paper-based sketching, can save time, money and converge to better solutions more quickly. However, this design process is often viewed to be too informal. Consequently users do not know how to manage their thoughts and ideas (to first think divergently, to then finally converge on a suitable solution). We present the Five Design Sheet (FdS) methodology. The methodology enables users to create information visualization interfaces through lo-fidelity methods. Users sketch and plan their ideas, helping them express different possibilities, think through these ideas to consider their potential effectiveness as solutions to the task (sheet 1); they create three principle designs (sheets 2,3 and 4); before converging on a final realization design that can then be implemented (sheet 5). In this article, we present (i) a review of the use of sketching as a planning method for visualization and the benefits of sketching, (ii) a detailed description of the Five Design Sheet (FdS) methodology, and (iii) an evaluation of the FdS using the System Usability Scale, along with a case-study of its use in industry and experience of its use in teaching.

Although there have been studies demonstrating that users will respond favorably to synthetic companions and team-mates in computer games, there has been little research into how a player's behavior may change when a known non-player character (NPC) assumes a human identity or persona. This is a common scenario in modern computer games, where players interact with NPCs assuming the guise of human characters. To explore this question, an online game was developed in which a human player had a primary objective of surviving against increasingly difficult waves of enemies. As a secondary objective, the player was tasked with protecting an unarmed NPC companion which assumed either a human, or non-human identity, but with identical underlying Artificial Intelligence. The intention was to explore whether the human player would be more or less protective of a synthetic companion simply due to the identity assumed. The results of the study demonstrate that player's behavior does change based on identity, and clearly indicates that the player was more protective of the companion assuming a human identity. Furthermore, the results show that this phenomenon extends beyond simple human and non-human identities, and that the specific persona, or gender of the NPC may influence the player's empathy towards it.

Procedural animation systems are capable of synthesizing vivid organic character motion automatically. However, these systems can consist of hundreds of interlinked parameters, yielding a very large search space of potential animations and emergent behaviours. Parametrised Animation is also notoriously difficult to automatically optimise, as the resultant motion or behaviour can be subtle, complex and subjective. We describe a web-based simulation that enables multiple users to interactively rate the animation of a randomly generated population of virtual creatures based on a prescribed criteria. A record of each individual rating is stored and used to seed subsequent generations, thereby guiding the system towards exhibiting a desired type of motion or behaviour. We start by introducing issues inherent to procedural animation techniques and survey related work. We then describe our prototype implementation that allows multiple users to interactively shape the parameters of a snake-like animation system in real-time. We conclude by discussing the next steps of our research, including the optimisation of procedurally animated dolphins.

In this paper, we propose an approach inspired by Gardenfors conceptual spaces, to represent concepts (specifically colour) in a situated embodied agent. Through this we also extend the work of Braitenberg by proposing an alternate vehicle capable of recognising colour concepts. Furthermore, we demonstrate how it can learn to distinguish between different colours by evolving our vehicle’s conceptual space using Template Based Evolution. Background and motivation Categorisation and the ability to recognise and represent concepts has been described as a fundamental cognitive ability and a primary research goal of AI (Gardenfors and Williams, 2001). The traditional approach from classical AI is to represent concepts symbolically using a top-down design process. The bottom-up subsymbolic (connectionist) approach, in contrast, emphasizes the importance of symbol grounding and the crucial role that the body has to play, by having the agent situated in the world and embodied— able to perceive and interact with the world through sensorymotor co-ordination (Pfeifer and Scheier, 2001). Being able to recognise similarity is key to many biological phenomena, such as how simplistic agents are able to learn what food is safe to eat. Whilst prototypical items are easily represented through the symbolic approach, this does not take into account possible variations that naturally occur in real-life. Take the problem of colour recognition, for example. In natural systems, it is very unlikely to find exactly the same colour—no leaf on a tree is ever the same shade of green, or a berry is ever the same shade of red. Gardenfors (2004) presents an alternative methodology, called Conceptual Spaces which models knowledge in the form of regions in a geometric space made up of quality dimensions. By modeling in this way, Gardenfors argues that an agent is able to recognise variations on a defined concept prototype. A primary motivation for this paper is to see if a Conceptual Spaces representation can be implemented in a situated, embodied agent in a manner analogous to the approach adopted by Pfeifer and Scheier (2001) in order to demonstrate how concepts such as colour can be learnt in an unsupervised way.