Exploring the Effects of a Virtual Companion on Solitary Jogging Experience.

Group exercise with superior partners is more effective for gaining motivation and improving athletic performance than when exercising alone, but it can be difficult to always find such partners. In this paper, we propose a novel experience of jogging with a virtual companion instead of a human partner. We report on qualitative analysis results from a controlled experiment to investigate how joggers feel and how their behavior changes when they jog alone, with a human partner, or with a virtual companion. The virtual companion was represented as either a full-body, limb-only, or a point-light avatar using smart glasses.