This study proposes the use of avatars to generate non-verbal communication in a multimodal
interactive system, mainly based on the affective or emotional aspects of this type of communication.
The objective of this study is the use of avatars as an element for generating non-verbal communication,
without taking a specific application in account, but rather analysing all their interaction possibilities.
Therefore, all the aspects related with the emotional multimodal interaction through avatars have
been analysed as (i) the main advantages and disadvantages of integrating a multimodal interactive
system, (ii) the elements comprising the interactive system (the user, the avatar and the application)
and (iii) their characteristics, (iv) the interaction levels that may occur among the elements and (v)
the interaction types that have to be taken into account when generating an emotional multimodal
interaction through avatars. Once all this information has been analysed, a general architecture is
proposed that includes all these types of interaction that can occur in a system which includes avatars.
This architecture can serve to formalise the development of emotional applications with and without
avatars.