SPEAKInVR : Validation d’une audience virtuelle

Nowadays public speaking is one of the most important skills a person should develop. Such a skill is vital in many circumstances and in very different fields: the sales representative who presents a product to customers, the tourist guide visiting a city with a group, the manager who defends his project in front of stakeholders, the candidate during a job interview, the professor in front of students… Unfortunately, many firms complain about the too low level of this skill within their staff. The global theme of our work is to look for innovative solutions leading to an improvement of public speaking performances. The global project aims to help people to speak in public by training them in a realistic and interactive VR environment providing some feedbacks. Unity 3D engine was used to create a first basic version of the tool. 3D avatars have been designed and animated to represent some common audience postures, corresponding to different degrees of arousal and valence, and some classical situations as people typing on laptops or playing with smartphones. 3D photogrammetric versions of these avatars will soon be completed for testing increased realism. The objective of this presentation is to validate the virtual audience.