193 research outputs found
Jacob - an animated instruction agent for virtual reality
This paper gives an overview of the Jacob project. This project involves the construction of a 3D virtual environment where an animated human -like agent called Jacob gives instruction to the user. The project investigates virtual reality techniques and focuses on three issues: the software engineering aspects of building a virtual reality system, the integration of natural language interaction and other interaction modalities, and the use of agent technology. The Jacob agent complies with the H-Anim standard. It has been given a task model and an instruction model in order to teach the user a particular task. The results of the project can be generalised so that the agent can be used to instruct other tasks in other virtual environments
ECA Perspectives - Requirements, Applications, Technology
In the last years we have developed a platform for
the realization of embodied (conversational)
agents, in a distributed logic programming
framework. In this paper we will present an
overview of our work, by discussing the
requirements that acted as our guidelines for
design decisions during development, some of the
applications that have served as target
demonstrators for developing and testing new
functionality, and the (distributed logic
programming) technology which we used for the
realization of the platform and the implementation
of our STEP scripting language.
Although the focus of our paper will primarily be
our own DLP+X3D platform, we believe that our
discussion along the perspectives of requirements,
applications and technology might be more generally
worthwhile in establishing the relative merits of
the operational use of ECA-technology. At the end
of this paper, we will moreover provide some hints
of how to approach the experimental validation of
the (possible) benefits of embodied conversational
agents in user applications
Social interaction in collaborative engineering environments
Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 128-131).by Joon Suk Hor.M.Eng
Analysis domain model for shared virtual environments
The field of shared virtual environments, which also
encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a
system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model
A MPEG-4 virtual human animation engine for interactive web based applications
This paper presents a novel, MPEG-4 compliant animation engine (body player). It has been designed to synthesize virtual human full-body animations in interactive multimedia applications for the web. We believe that a full-body player can provide a more expressive and interesting interface than the use of animated faces only (talking heads). This is one of the first implementations of a MPEG-4 animation engine with deformable models (it uses the MPEG-4 Body Definition Parameters and Deformation Tables). Several potential applications are overviewed. This software tool was developed in the framework of the IST-INTERFACE European projec
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Planning techniques for agent based 3D animations.
The design of autonomous agents capable of performing a given goal in a 3D domain continues to be a challenge for computer animated story generation systems. We present a novel prototype which consists of a 3D engine and a planner for a simple virtual world. We incorporate the 2D planner into the 3D engine to provide 3D animations. Based on the plan, the 3D world is created and the objects are positioned. Then the plan is linearized into simpler actions for object animation and rendered via the 3D engine. We use JINNI3D as the engine and WARPLAN-C as the planner for the above-mentioned prototype. The user can interact with the system using a simple natural language interface. The interface consists of a shallow parser, which is capable of identifying a set of predefined basic commands. The command given by the user is considered as the goal for the planner. The resulting plan is created and rendered in 3D. The overall system is comparable to a character based interactive story generation system except that it is limited to the predefined 3D environment
Integrating realistic human group behaviors into a networked 3D virtual environment
Distributed Interactive Simulation DIS-Java-VRML Working Group. Includes supplementary material provided from the contents of a CD-Rom issued containing the work of all three Working Group members and all supplementary material, in compressed format.Virtual humans operating inside large-scale virtual environments (VE) are typically controlled as single entities. Coordination of group activity and movement is usually the responsibility of their real world human controllers. Georeferencing coordinate systems, single-precision versus double-precision number representation and network delay requirements make group operations difficult. Mounting multiple humans inside shared or single vehicles, (i.e. air-assault operations, mechanized infantry operations, or small boat/riverine operations) with high fidelity is often impossible. The approach taken in this thesis is to reengineer the DIS-Java-VRML Capture the Flag game geolocated at Fort Irwin, California to allow the inclusion of human entities. Human operators are given the capability of aggregating or mounting nonhuman entities for coordinated actions. Additionally, rapid content creation of human entities is addressed through the development of a native tag set for the Humanoid Animation (H-Anim) 1.1 Specification in Extensible 3D (X3D). Conventions are demonstrated for integrating the DIS-Java-VRML and H-Anim draft standards using either VRML97 or X3D encodings. The result of this work is an interface to aggregate and control articulated humans using an existing model with a standardized motion library in a networked virtual environment. Virtual human avatars can be mounted and unmounted from aggregation entities. Simple demonstration examples show coordinated tactical maneuver among multiple humans with and without vehicles. Live 3D visualization of animated humanoids on realistic terrain is then portrayed inside freely available web browsers.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited
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