Abstract: In this talk, I will first discuss a body of research on emotion contagion and visual attention in personal space human-virtual human interactions. We investigated the effects of animation, appearance and interaction fidelity on the emotional reactions and visual attention of users in simulated dyadic and crowd scenarios in VR. I will discuss the results and lessons learned from these investigations, which have implications for the design of virtual humans in inter-personal simulations for healthcare, edutainment and social VR simulations. Next, I will highlight a body of work investigating near-field perception-action in VR that systematically examined anthropomorphic and anthropometric fidelity of self-avatars on near-field depth, reach boundary and affordance perception. I will discuss the research findings and implications of this work to rehabilitation and fine motor skills training in VR. Finally, I will discuss our recent research in investigating novel 3D interaction techniques and end-effector representations on users’ near-field dynamic affordances, selection and manipulation interactions in VR and Mixed Reality (MR). Our research shows that concordance in end-effector representations, body-scaled self-avatars, and simple interaction metaphors are effective in 3D selection, manipulation, sense of embodiment,

and perception-action coordination in XR. I will conclude the talk by summarizing our findings and highlight the major takeaways for the design of virtual humans, self-avatars and interactive scenario for near-field fine motor skills training and simulated inter-personal experiences in XR.

Bio: Sabarish ‘Sab’ Babu is a tenured Associate Professor in the Division of Human Centered Computing in the School of Computing at Clemson University. He earned a BS (2000), MS (2002) and PhD (2007) degrees at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Iowa, prior to joining Clemson University in 2010. His research interests are in the areas of virtual environments, applied perception in XR, virtual humans/crowds, avatars, educational virtual reality, and 3D human computer interaction. He has authored or co-authored over 130 peer-reviewed journal and conference paper publications in these areas of research. He was the General Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR) 2016. He also served as a Program Chair for IEEE VR 2017. He currently serves on the editorial board of IEEE TVCG and MDPI Virtual Worlds journals. He and his students have received 8 Best Paper Awards in premier IEEE and ACM research venues including the IEEE International Conference on Virtual Reality (2018, 2023), IEEE International Conference on 3D User Interfaces (2007, 2016),

ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (2016, 2020, 2022), the IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics (2013), and Best Presentation Awards in ACM SAP 2021 and IEEE VR 2024, and several honorable mentions for best paper and presentation awards. He has graduated 9 PhD students, and several MS CS and undergraduate honors students. His research has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Department of Labor, and several industry awards from companies such as Adobe, Bon Secours Healthcare, Prisma Health Network, Medline Medical, and BMW group.