A new integration method of constructing an interactive virtual environment for the collaboration between virtual agent and real human

Abstract

A new collaborative environnient has been constructed recently. in which a human-shaped virtual agent can comm.unicate with a real human through both verbal and nonoerbal ways. The collaborative environment is very promising as the nezt generation communication environment, but there exists a problem the workload for the construction is too large for the practical use. In this study, the system for siinulating the collaborative environment is divided into several subsystems according to its function: and for each subsystem a new constmction method to reduce the constmction workload has been. developed individually. In this paper, newly developed construction methods are described such as an object-oriented method for constructing virtual spaces, an affurdance-based body motion synthesizing method and a modeling method of the virtual agent's behavior using Petri-net.