From Pixels to Perception: The Interplay Between Real and Virtual Human Experiences

Soraia Raupp Musse is a Full Professor at the Polytechnic School of PUCRS (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) and a CNPq Productivity Fellow. She holds degrees in Computer Science from PUCRS (BSc, 1990), UFRGS (MSc, 1994), and EPFL in Switzerland (MSc, 1997; Ph.D., 2000), with a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania (2016). Her research focuses on graphics processing, including virtual humans, crowd simulation, visual perception, and computer vision. She has authored over 220 publications in leading journals and conferences, including Elsevier Computers & Graphics, IEEE TVCG, Computer Graphics Forum, SIGGRAPH, and MIG, and co-authored four internationally published books with Springer-Verlag, including the first book on Crowd Simulation. Her work has been recognized with 50 awards.  She coordinates the newly established INCT-SiM-AI, a Brazilian National Institute of Science and Technology focused on AI-driven personalized solutions for climate disaster response.Julia is a PhD Candidate at Polytechnic School of PUCRS (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil). She has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from PUCRS (2021) and worked as a visiting PhD Student at École Polytechnique de Paris (2023-2024). Her research focuses on computer animation focused on virtual characters and behavioral animation and computer vision applied to virtual agents. She also has experience working in the industry as a game developer and software engineer. Julia has published several papers focusing on gaze animation, synthetic vision and facial expression analysis in venues such as Computer Graphics Forum, IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, ACM Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA), and others.Greice Pinho Dal Molin is a researcher and DBA (database administrator) at a mixed-economy company as an IT Specialist. She holds a degree in Mathematics from UFRGS (2003), a master's degree from PUCRS (2019), and a doctorate from PUCRS (2024). Her research focuses on the quantitative perception of animated characters with an emphasis on Uncanny Valley Theory. Greice Pinho has published several scientific articles on the quantitative perception of animated characters, including publications in journals such as Elsevier, Springer, SIGGRAPH, IEEE Xplore (ICSC), among others.Victor Flávio de Andrade Araujo is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Polytechnic School of PUCRS and Assistant Professor at Tiradentes University (UNIT, in Sergipe, Brazil). He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from UNIT (2017), a Master's degree from PUCRS (2020), and a PhD from PUCRS (2024), with a sandwich period (visiting scholar) at the Sorbonne University (Marie Curie Campus, Paris, France - 2022-2023). His research focuses on the perception of virtual humans, with an emphasis on biases. Victor Araujo has published over 30 scientific papers on the perception of virtual humans, including publications in Computers & Graphics, SIGGRAPH, The Visual Computer, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, and others.Paulo Ricardo Knob is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Polytechnic School of PUCRS and Scientific Project Manager from INCT-Sim-AI. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from UPF (BSc, 2010), a Master's degree from PUCRS (2018), and a PhD from PUCRS (2022). His research focuses on virtual agents, with an emphasis on crowd simulation and conversational agents. Paulo Ricardo Knob has published over 20 scientific papers on the area, including publications in Computers & Graphics, The Visual Computer, IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing, among others.

• .- Introduction..- Human Perception of Virtual Humans..- Computational Analysis of Perception..- Virtual Human Perception, Gaze and Behavior..- Applications of Virtual Humans as Embodied Conversational Agents..- Ethical Considerations and Future Trends. .- Final Reflections: From Pixels to Perception.