An Efficient Synthetic Vision System for 3D Multi-character Systems

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of sensing virtual environments for 3D intelligent multi-character simulations. As these creatures should display reactive skills (navigation or gazing), together with the necessary planning processes, required to animate their behaviours, we present an efficient and fully scalable sensor system designed to provide this information to different kinds of 3D embodied agents (games, storytelling, etc). Inspired in Latombe's vision system [5], as recently presented by Peters [1], we avoid the second rendering mechanism, looking for the necessary efficiency, and we introduce a fully scalable communication protocol, based on XML labelling techniques, to let the agent handle the communication flow within its 3D environment (sense + act). The synthetic sensor system presented has been tested with two plausible local navigation formalisms (Neural Networks and Rule based System), whose models and results have been also reported.

Integrating Social Skills in Task-Oriented 3D IVA

“…In order to verify the techniques previously explained, we have executed several simulations in a structured 3D environment where agents perceive local information (in a room domain) from their synthetic vision sensors [14]. This simulation framework can reproduce social worlds where 3DIVA deal with interactive situations (e.g.…”

“…These are in charge of controlling the actuation of the 3D actor inside the virtual world thanks to the use of an heuristic planner. The collaborative features developed for our characters and presented in this paper are based on a communication model [14] in which the environment acts as a transmission channel (similarly to the air in the real world). Therefore, communication can be considered as an action carried out throughout the world; that allows us to design message filters depending on distance to other agents, presence of walls, etc.…”

Fundamentals of Agent Perception and Attention Modelling

“…Generally analogous to the higher acuity area of the human eye, these renderings provide a solution to the problem at the expense of increased processing. Other approaches use a hybrid of raster and geometric techniques in order to balance efficiency with accuracy (Lozano et al, 2003;Tu and Terzopoulos, 1994).…”

Integrating miniMin-HSP Agents in a Dynamic Simulation Framework

“…In [13], we discuss the use of HTN's [6] and HSP planning formalisms in Interactive Storytelling from the perspective of story generation and authoring. The main difference between these systems and the one presented here lies in the introduction of the perception system presented in [10] which let the agents deal with partially observable 3D dynamic environments.…”

“…In this paper, we describe the framework created for implementing AI-based animations for artificial actors in the context of IVE (Intelligent Virtual Environments). The minMin-HSP (Heuristic Search Planner) planner presented in [12] has been updated to deal with 3D dynamic simulation environments, using the sensory/actuator system fully implemented in UnrealTM and presented in [10]. Here, we show how we have integrated these systems to handle the necessary balance between the reactive and deliberative skills for 3D Intelligent Virtual Agents (3DI-VAs).…”