# Topics > Conversational AI > Intelligent personal virtual voice assistants >  Virtual Humans, USC Institute for Creative Technologies, Playa Vista, California, USA

## Airicist

Developer - USC Institute for Creative Technologies

MxR Lab

Director for Virtual Humans Research - Jonathan Gratch

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## Airicist

Virtual humans over mobile

Published on May 3, 2016




> The MxR Lab has built a prototype system that allows virtual humans to initiate and receive video calls over Skype or any similar service. With this platform, we have initiated a research program to explore the applications and characteristics of virtual humans that interact over mobile video.

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## Airicist

Virtual Human loudspeaker

Published on May 23, 2016




> Computer controlled virtual humans are an increasingly important component of applications such as training, therapy, novel computer interfaces, and social research. Often virtual characters are projected onto screens that are blended into a physical setting. Stereo loudspeakers to the left and right of the screen are typically used for virtual human audio. Unfortunately, stereo pairs can produce an effect known as precedence, which causes users standing close to a particular loudspeaker to perceive a collapse of the stereo sound to that singular loudspeaker. This video highlights a study conducted at the MxR Lab where we sought to determine if this effect might degrade the presentation of a virtual character, or if this would be prevented by the ventriloquism effect and if users might express a preference for a sound source collocated with the virtual human’s mouth rather than a stereo pair.

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