Human Avatars in Playful and Humorous Environments

Abstract

In future smart environments sensors and actuators know about the environment’s inhabitants and visitors. This knowledge allows them to predict and suggest activities and behavior and even to take care that certain activities and behavior are enforced on inhabitants and visitors. For example, in a potential dangerous situation a car driver can be alerted, can be given a limited number of choices or the car can take over. Similar environmental behavior, not necessarily involving danger, can happen in domestic, urban and office or other professional environments. Humans have now become part of the Internet of Things. Wearables, clothes, body sensors, smart tattoos and implants allow the environment to monitor a user, but also to guide and steer a user in a way and a direction that suits the environment and those who own or maintain the environment. In this paper we investigate how a smart environment can use its smartness to create funny and humorous situations by suggesting or enforcing particular activities and behavior of its human inhabitants. In order to do so we have to look at how actor behavior and activity is modeled in storytelling research. In this research we have actors, but sometimes also directors or the environment is called upon to act as a smart director. Rather than aiming at efficiency when guiding ‘actors’ in these environments, we can as well guide human and virtual actors towards situations that are humorous or potentially humorous.