Call for Participation: AI-Driven Virtual Humans
ISMAR 2026 Tutorial | October 5th or 6th | Room TBC
Overview
This tutorial will explore how we can populate MR and VR environments with believable, interactive virtual humans. Encountering a virtual human in XR is a powerful experience, because, unlike an on-screen character, the virtual human can be life-sized and share a space with the participants, making body language cues like eye contact and body posture work as they do in the real world. The rise of LLMs has revolutionised the ability of technology to handle realistic dialogues with people. However, there is a lot missing before we are able to create realistic virtual characters that are able to interact with a real person in a face-to-face conversation. A large proportion of our human-to-human communication is non-verbal including gestures, facial expressions, gaze and posture. This tutorial will introduce virtual humans and their application, including training, mental healthcare, psychology experiments and entertainment. It will then go into depth on how we perceive virtual humans and the implications for how we will design them. The second half explain how Deep Neural Networks and LLMs can be integrated with a VR system, followed by an extensive discussion of non-verbal communication. The tutorial will end with suggestions of how to evaluate virtual humans, and suggestions of future research.
Why Attend?
Timely Insights: Learn how to leverage LLMs to enhance the quality and interactivity of virtual humans in diverse applications such as games, healthcare, and education.
Comprehensive Curriculum: The session covers the history of virtual humans, technical integration of LLMs, the mechanics of non-verbal cues, and experimental methods for evaluation
Expert Instruction: Taught by leading experts from Goldsmiths, University of London, who have decades of experience in social XR, AI and Virtual Human research.
Tutorial Program
Introduction to Virtual Humans core idead and applications
Perception of Virtual Humans - appearance and behaviour realism
Non-verbal Communication non-verbal cues and how to generate them
Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) for Virtual Humans Large language models for conversation and deep learning for non-verbal communication
Future Directions Panel discussion.
Target Audience
This half-day tutorial is designed for postgraduate students (MA/PhD), academic researchers, and industry professionals looking to incorporate advanced virtual characters into their XR projects.
About the organisers/presenters
Prof. Marco Gillies: is a professor of Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has pioneered virtual human research since the early 2000s, including publishing one of the first papers, together with Doron Friedman applying machine learning to virtual humans.
Prof. Xueni ‘Sylvia’ Pan: Professor of VR at Goldsmiths, University of London. with nearly 20 years of experience in social neuroscience and XR technology. Her work has applied virtual humans to a range of areas including psychology research, medical education, mental health training and social work. Her work has been featured by BBC Horizon and New Scientist.
Prof Doron Friedman: is a Professor at Reichman University, Israel’s leading private university, and co-Director of the Advanced Reality Lab. His research explores the future of human experience at the intersection of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and immersive reality. His work has appeared in leading scientific venues, including Nature Communications and PNAS, and has been supported by numerous national and international research grants, including four EU consortium projects
Prof Katja Zibrek: is an interdisciplinary research scientist at Inria centre at Rennes University, France. Her main area of research is exploring the perception of virtual humans using virtual reality. She regularly contributes to international journals in graphics and applied perception and participates in several program committees, e.g., IEEE VR and ACM Symposium on Applied Perception.
The tutorial draws on material from the organizers' forthcoming book, An Introduction to Virtual and Augmented Reality: Designing Impactful Experiences.
Join us at ISMAR 2026 to help shape the next generation of social virtual environments!
