Integrating Embodied Artificial Intelligence with Virtual Reality: Enhancing User Experience through Trustworthy Intelligent Avatars

This paper presents an innovative approach that integrates Embodied Artificial Intelligence (EAI) into Virtual Reality (VR) by developing trustworthy intelligent avatars capable of adapting to users’ physiological states and behavioral nuances, thereby enhancing trustworthiness. We introduce ”SmartSimVR,” a versatile framework that leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) and sensor fusion to create these intelligent avatars. The framework facilitates real-time learning and adaptation within a closed loop. To validate our framework, we implemented SmartSimVR in a driving simulator, where the car functions as a non-humanoid avatar representing the user. This human-centered intelligence aims to mitigate cybersickness, a key factor in improving user experience. The trustworthy intelligent avatar continuously learns from both objective data—encompassing multimodal physiological and behavioral data—and subjective feedback, adjusting its behavior in real-time if it infers cybersickness symptoms by modifying car acceleration after a dynamic threshold time frame. Our experiment involved 30 subjects participating in two sessions, allowing for effective comparison of results. Analysis conducted in the time-frequency domain, using spectrogram power and wavelet energy metrics, identified crucial objective measures—such as eye velocity, eye angular velocity, and electrodermal activity (EDA)—as sensitive indicators of cybersickness. Notably, we observed significant reductions in these measures among users interacting with the avatar, reinforcing its effectiveness in minimizing cybersickness. Additionally, subjective assessments using the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) revealed a substantial 44.3% reduction in symptoms when participants engaged with the avatar. Strong positive correlations between the wavelet energy of these indicators and SSQ scores further support our findings. Together, both subjective and objective results provide compelling evidence that the avatar can significantly enhance user experiences in VR environments.