Question-asking is one of the key indicators of cognitive engagement. However, understanding how the distinct psychological affordances of presentation media shape learners' spoken inquiries with embodied Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) remains limited. To systematically examine this process, we propose a 5W1H-based framework for analyzing learner questions. Using this framework, we conducted a user study comparing an Augmented Reality-based IVA (AR-IVA) deployed in the physical environment with a screen-based IVA (Video-IVA) during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) instruction. Results showed that the AR-IVA elicited higher spatial and social presence and promoted more frequent and longer questions focused on clarification and understanding. In contrast, the Video-IVA encouraged questions regarding procedural refinement. Presence acted as a selective filter, shaping the timing and topic of questions rather than as a universal mediator. These effects were significantly moderated by learners' motivational and strategic characteristics toward learning. Based on these findings, we propose design implications for IVA-supported learning systems.

The remarkable reasoning and generalization capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) have paved the way for their expanding applications in embodied AI, robotics, and other real-world tasks. To effectively support these applications, grounding in spatial and temporal understanding in multimodal environments is essential. To this end, recent works have leveraged scene graphs, a structured representation that encodes entities, attributes, and their relationships in a scene. However, a comprehensive evaluation of LLMs’ ability to utilize scene graphs remains limited. In this work, we introduce Text-Scene Graph (TSG) Bench, a benchmark designed to systematically assess LLMs’ ability to (1) understand scene graphs and (2) generate them from textual narratives. With TSG Bench we evaluate 11 LLMs and reveal that, while models perform well on scene graph understanding, they struggle with scene graph generation, particularly for complex narratives. Our analysis indicates that these models fail to effectively decompose discrete scenes from a complex narrative, leading to a bottleneck when generating scene graphs. These findings underscore the need for improved methodologies in scene graph generation and provide valuable insights for future research. The demonstration of our benchmark is available at https://tsg-bench.netlify.app. Additionally, our code and evaluation data are publicly available at https://github.com/docworlds/tsg-bench.

We proposed viewpoint-tolerant shared depth perception without individual tracking by leveraging human cognitive compensation in universally 3D rendered images on a wall-sized display. While traditional 3D-perception-enabled display systems have primarily focused on single-user scenarios-adapting rendering based on head and eye tracking-the use of wall-sized displays to extend spatial experiences and support perceptually coherent multi-user interactions remains underexplored. We investigated the effects of virtual depths (dv) and absolute viewing distance (da) on human cognitive compensation factors (perceived distance difference, viewing angle threshold, and perceived presence) to construct the wall display-based eXtended Reality (XR) space. Results show that participants experienced a compelling depth perception even from off-center angles of 23°-37°, and largely increasing virtual depth worsens depth perception and presence factors, highlighting the importance of balancing extended depth of virtual space and viewing distance from the wall-sized display. Drawing on these findings, wall-sized displays in venues such as museums, galleries, and classrooms can evolve beyond 2D information sharing to offer immersive, spatially extended group experiences without individualized tracking or wearables.

We propose a novel crowd data-driven optimization approach for artwork placement in virtual exhibitions. With the emerging concept of Metaverse, a multitude of users can engage with content contemporaneously in virtual exhibitions. Yet, few studies have suggested a method to resolve crowd density concentration in multiuser Mixed Reality (MR) and Virtual Reality (VR) environments. In this study, our approach leverages crowd data engaged with artworks to predict optimal placement of artworks to distribute crowd density in virtual exhibitions, prior to exhibition planning. To investigate the requirement and validity of our approach, we conducted focus group interviews and an artwork relocation experiment as preliminary studies. In the generation of solution scenes for optimal placement, our optimizer adaptively scrutinizes placeable areas with considerations of crowd density distribution, scene rationality, and artwork similarity. Through a performance comparison analysis between optimization results, we confirmed that the optimizer successfully fulfilled the intended objectives with respect to the design considerations, resolving practical scenarios in exhibition planning.

In this study, we present a flexible delivery routing problem faced by logistics service providers in which some customers may receive their packages indirectly. Customers are supposed to get their packages directly from a delivery service provider or be delivered to indirectly using a nearby station drop and a subsequent separate last-mile delivery service provider that finally delivers their goods. We address the problem of determining whether deliveries to customers should be fulfilled directly or indirectly in this situation. We present the mathematical programming model and propose a near-optimal heuristic approach based on a memetic algorithm. In addition, we evaluate the numerical performance of the proposed algorithm and perform various parametric analyses to gain managerial insights from the model.