ComunicArte: A Public Speaking Trainer in Virtual Reality

Project ComunicArte is a virtual reality videogame for training the ability of public speaking. It is built as an environment where the speaker confronts a virtual audience that reacts in real time to the speaker's features, such as voice, gestures and bio-metric parameters (heart rate or skin conductivity, among others). The novelty of this videogame is that it is focused on the audience, since in real life, the only feedback we receive when we speak in public is that of our listeners. By their reactions we can determine if our communication is being effective. For that purpose, we included in the game a virtual audience based on agents that is able to provide feedback to the speakers in real time, so that they can react and adapt their speech accordingly.