Territoriality and Visible Social Commitment for Virtual Agents

Technology is changing faster day by day: The digital market is filled with new devices and machines with ever greater computing powers, supporting interaction scenarios unthinkable until few years ago. As part of this trend, we are moving towards a new world, a virtual one: There are many applications that immerse users in this new reality through compelling sensory experiences that hint at amazing future possibilities.\newline Thanks to the growing availability and popularity of virtual reality, recreating believable social situations, with all its peculiarities, in high-fidelity becomes a relevant challenge. In particular when it comes to autonomous virtual agents, we would like to implement behaviours that are closer to those of human beings. This perspective leads us to address the problem of human territoriality, a term associated with non-verbal communication that refers to how people use space to establish and manage relationships with others. In order to achieve this, we created a simulation of situations that highlight how virtual non-verbal behaviour can be influenced by the level of social commitment of the agents involved. \newline The simulation is firmly based on social theory, in particular human territorial management. The agents have the ability to move around in the simulated virtual environment and interact with each other and the objects around them, demonstrating how they can understand and be aware of their surroundings. The simulation, implemented within the Unity 3D game engine, can be applied in games and other virtual environments that involve any virtual agents, immediately giving them greater social credibility and familiarity than can be achieved through conventional methods