Monitoring Social Expectations in Second Life

Online virtual worlds such as Second Life provide a rich medium for unstructured human interaction in a shared simulated 3D environment. However, many human interactions take place in a structured social context where participants play particular roles and are subject to expectations governing their behaviour, and current virtual worlds do not provide any support for this type of interaction. There is therefore an opportunity to adapt the tools developed in the MAS community for structured social interactions between software agents (inspired by human society) and adapt these for use with the computer-mediated human communication provided by virtual worlds. This paper describes the application of one such tool for use with Second Life. A model checker for online monitoring of social expectations defined in temporal logic has been integrated with Second Life, allowing users to be notified when their expectations of others have been fulfilled or violated. Avatar actions in the virtual world are detected by a script, encoded as propositions and sent to the model checker, along with the social expectation rules to be monitored. Notifications of expectation fulfilment and violation are returned to the script to be displayed to the user. This utility of this tool is reliant on the ability of the Linden scripting language (LSL) to detect events of significance in the application domain, and a discussion is presented on how a range of monitored structured social scenarios could be realised despite the limitations of LSL

Execution infrastructure for normative virtual environments

Virtual Institutions (VIs) have proven to be adequate to engineer applications where participants can be humans and software agents. VIs combine Electronic Institutions (EIs) and 3D Virtual Worlds (VWs). In this context, Electronic Institutions are used to establish the regulations that structure interactions and support software agent participation while Virtual Worlds facilitate human participation. In this paper we propose Virtual Institution eXEcution Environment (VIXEE) as an innovative communication infrastructure for VIs. Using VIXEE to connect Virtual Worlds and EI opens EI to humans, providing a fully operational and comprehensive environment. The main features of the infrastructure are (i) the causal connection between Virtual Worlds and Electronic Institutions, (ii) the automatic generation and update of the VIs' 3D visualization and (iii) the simultaneous participation of users from different virtual world platforms. We illustrate the execution of VIXEE system in a simple eAuction house example and use this example to evaluate the performance of our solution

Agents for educational games and simulations

This book consists mainly of revised papers that were presented at the Agents for Educational Games and Simulation (AEGS) workshop held on May 2, 2011, as part of the Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized topical sections on middleware applications, dialogues and learning, adaption and convergence, and agent applications

Estudio y mejora de la usabilidad de un mundo virtual híbrido: interacción humano-agente

Treballs Finals de Grau d'Enginyeria Informàtica, Facultat de Matemàtiques, Universitat de Barcelona, Any: 2013, Director: Inmaculada Rodriguez Santiago i Pablo Almajano FrancoyNowadays, due to the increasing use of the Internet and the improvements in the field of 3D graphics virtual worlds have reached a high popularity. A virtual world is a 3D simulation that features a real or imaginary world where the users, represented by avatars, interact with each other and the environment. These open 3D environments are attractive for their immersiveness and the enjoyment they offer, as well as for the social aspect that they bring by joining multiple users together in a common environment and engaging them to participate together. Taking into account not only their popularity but the many practical uses a virtual world has, serious virtual worlds arise. Their aim is to regulate the behaviors in the virtual world in order to allow certain tasks to be done, which can be for example procedures related to e-Government or e-Learning. In this project we have conducted a usability study of v-mWater, a serious and hybrid (where both humans and bots interact) virtual world. With the results that have been obtained from the study, we have implemented the most beneficial improvement of v-mWater, that has consisted in using AIML to allow the bots of v-mWater to process natural language, turning them into conversational bots

MIRRORED MESSAGING PLATFORM - DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC DISPLAY SYSTEM TO SUPPORT REAL AND VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES

Master'sMASTER OF ARTS (ARCHITECTURE

Metodología de simulación paralela aplicada a sistemas multi-agente en entornos virtuales

Qualquier cambio de paradigma es indicador de que un cambio más profundo se está realizando a nivel tecnológico, cultural e incluso social. Cada salto de paradigma tiene una duración distinta, pero todos comparten algo: una vez el cambio ocurre, nada vuelve a ser como antes. El término “realidad virtual” lleva más de veinte años siendo profusamente utilizado y ya se ha integrado en nuestra cultura tecnológica. Pero su excesivo y a veces frívolo uso ha difuminado su significado, provocando desconfianza. Habitualmente se han aglutinado distintos conceptos bajo un mismo paraguas: juegos 3D, visión estereoscópica, video 360o, etc. En el camino de adaptación a este paradigma será necesario aclarar conceptos, acotar tecnologías, diseñar metodologías y sobre todo, aprender las nuevas reglas del juego según surjan y adaptarnos a ellas. El mayor problema encontrado en las primeras experiencias con la realidad virtual ha sido la inmadurez «hardware», pero si lo comparamos con otro cambio de paradigma como la tecnología móvil y observamos la evolución de los smartphones en los últimos diez años puede que esta inmadurez del hardware de realidad virtual no dure mucho más tiempo. En cualquier caso la realidad virtual no es únicamente un dispositivo físico: el software asociado es tan o incluso más importante. Suponiendo que el hardware RV siga su ciclo de vida habitual: modelos cada vez más asequibles, fabricación a gran escala y saturación del mercado, es más que probable que el hardware adelante en madurez al software. Parece por tanto lógico dejar a un lado el hardware, ya encaminado su desarrollo, y centrarse en las carencias que el software presenta en el entorno de la realidad virtual. Al estudiar dichas carencias aparecen grandes lagunas: falta de metodologías, de metáforas válidas, de estrategias de diseño, de software base, de arquitecturas y de modelos teóricos que las soporten. La presente tesis trata de, abstrayéndose de los problemas del hardware, identificar los problemas más importantes, plantear hipótesis para resolver esos problemas, presentar unas propuestas innovadoras que puedan solucionarlos y mostrar experiencias que refrenden dichas propuestas. Se propondrán metáforas y principios de diseño que creen espacios contextuales bien identificados para acabar con la terminología imprecisa, se plantearán modelos matemáticos abstractos para soportar taxonomías y arquitecturas específicas, se mostrarán metodologías prácticas para definir buenas prácticas promoviendo su uso en la comunidad software y se aportarán entornos de trabajo basados en inteligencia artificial idóneos para implementar soluciones.Any paradigm shift is indicative of a deeper change is taking place at the technological, cultural and even social level. Each paradigm jump has a different duration, but all share something: once the change happens, nothing is as it was before. The term «virtual reality» has been extensively used for over twenty years and has already been integrated into our technological culture. But its excessive and sometimes frivolous use has blurred its meaning, causing distrust. Usually, different concepts have been merged under one single umbrella: 3D games, stereoscopic vision, 360o video, etc. In the path of adaptation to this paradigm it will be necessary to clarify concepts, to limit technologies, to design methodologies and, most important, to learn and adapt to the new rules in play. The biggest problems found in the first experiences with virtual reality are about «hardware» immaturity, but if we compare it with another paradigm shift as mobile technology and observe the evolution of smartphones in the last ten years may be that virtual reality immaturity of won’t last much longer. But virtual reality is not just a physical device: related software is as important as hardware, or even more. Assuming VR hardware will follow the usual lifecycle: increasingly affordable models, large-scale manufacturing and market saturation, hardware is more than likely to grow in maturity quicker than software. So the logical next step is to leave aside the hardware, and focus on the shortcomings that the software presents in the VR environment. When studying this topic, large gaps arises easily: lack of methodologies, valid metaphors, design strategies, basic software, architectures and theoretical models. The present thesis deals with the problems of software, identifying the most important, proposing hypotheses to solve these problems, presenting innovative proposals that can solve them and show experiences that endorse these proposals. We will propose metaphors and design principles that create well-defined contextual spaces to eliminate imprecise terminology, abstract mathematical models to support specific taxonomies and architectures, practical methodologies will be shown to define good practices promoting their use in the software community and will be provided Artificial intelligence-based work environments suitable for practical solution implementation.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ciencia y Tecnología InformáticaPresidente: Antonio Berlanga de Jesús.- Secretario: Ángel Arroyo Castillo.- Vocal: Luis Usero Aragoné

Monitoring Social Expectations in Second Life

Abstract. Online virtual worlds such as Second Life provide a rich medium for unstructured human interaction in a shared simulated 3D environment. However, many human interactions take place in a structured social context where participants play particular roles and are subject to expectations governing their behaviour, and current virtual worlds do not provide any support for this type of interaction. There is therefore an opportunity to adapt the tools developed in the MAS community for structured social interactions between software agents (inspired by human society) and adapt these for use with the computer-mediated human communication provided by virtual worlds. This paper describes the application of one such tool for use with Second Life. A model checker for online monitoring of social expectations defined in temporal logic has been integrated with Second Life, allowing users to be notified when their expectations of others have been fulfilled or violated. Avatar actions in the virtual world are detected by a script, encoded as propositions and sent to the model checker, along with the social expectation rules to be monitored. Notifications of expectation fulfilment and violation are returned to the script to be displayed to the user. This utility of this tool is reliant on the ability of the Linden scripting language (LSL) to detect events of significance in the application domain, and a discussion is presented on how a range of monitored structured social scenarios could be realised despite the limitations of LSL.

Interfacing a cognitive agent platform with Second Life

Second Life is a multi-purpose online virtual world that provides a rich platform for remote human interaction. It is increasingly being used as a simulation platform to model complex human interactions in diverse areas, as well as to simulate multi-agent systems. It would therefore be beneficial to provide techniques allowing high-level agent development tools, especially cognitive agent platforms such as belief-desire-intention (BDI) programming frameworks, to be interfaced to Second Life. This is not a trivial task as it involves mapping potentially unreliable sensor readings from complex Second Life simulations to a domain-specific abstract logical model of observed properties and/or events. This paper investigates this problem in the context of agent interactions in a multi-agent system simulated in Second Life. We present a framework which facilitates the connection of any multi-agent platform with Second Life, and demonstrate it in conjunction with an extension of the Jason BDI interpreter.Unpublished1. Linden Lab. Second Life Home Page. http://secondlife.com 2. OpenMetaverse Organization. libopenmetaverse developer wiki. http://lib.openmetaverse.org/wiki/Main_Page 3. Ranathunga, S., Cranefield, S., Purvis, M.: Integrating Expectation Handling into Jason. Discussion Paper 2011/03, Department of Information Science, University of Otago (2011). http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/1093/ 4. Cranefield, S., Winikoff, M.: Verifying social expectations by model checking truncated paths. Journal of Logic and Computation (2010). Advance access, doi:10.1093/logcom/exq055 5. Veksler, V.D.: Second Life as a Simulation Environment: Rich, high-fidelity world, minus the hassles. In: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of Cognitive Modeling (2009) 6. Weitnauer, E., Thomas, N., Rabe, F., Kopp, S.: Intelligent agents living in social virtual environments bringing Max into Second Life. In: H. Prendinger, J. Lester, M. Ishizuka (eds.) Intelligent Virtual Agents, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 5208, pp. 552–553. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg (2008) 7. Bordini, R.H., Hubner, J.F., Wooldridge, M.: Programming Multi-Agent Systems in AgentSpeak using Jason. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, England (2007) 8. EsperTech. Esper Tutorial. http://esper.codehaus.org/tutorials/tutorial/tutorial.html 9. Vstex Company. SecondFootball Home Page. http://www.secondfootball.com 10. Varvello, M., Picconi, F., Diot, C., Biersack, E.: Is there life in Second Life? In: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM CoNEXT Conference, CoNEXT ’08, pp. 1:1–1:12. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2008) 11. Eno, J., Gauch, S., Thompson, C.: Intelligent crawling in virtual worlds. In: Pro- ceedings of the 2009 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology - Volume 03, WI-IAT ’09, pp. 555–558. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA (2009) 12. Kappe, F., Zaka, B., Steurer, M.: Automatically detecting points of interest and social networks from tracking positions of avatars in a virtual world. In: Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Advances in Social Network Analysis and Mining, pp. 89–94. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA (2009) 13. Friedman, D., Steed, A., Slater, M.: Spatial social behavior in Second Life. In: C. Pelachaud, J.C. Martin, E. Andr, G. Chollet, K. Karpouzis, D. Pel (eds.) Intelligent Virtual Agents, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4722, pp. 252–263. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg (2007) 14. Yee, N., Bailenson, J.N., D, P., Urbanek, M., Chang, F., Merget, D.: The unbearable likeness of being digital; the persistence of nonverbal social norms in online virtual environments. Cyberpsychology and Behavior 10, 115–121 (2007) 15. La, C.A., Michiardi, P.: Characterizing user mobility in Second Life. In: Proceedings of the first workshop on Online social networks, WOSP ’08, pp. 79–84. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2008) 16. Cranefield, S., Li, G.: Monitoring social expectations in Second Life. In: J. Padget, A. Artikis, W. Vasconcelos, K. Stathis, V. Silva, E. Matson, A. Polleres (eds.) Coordination, Organizations, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems V, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 6069, pp. 133–146. Springer (2010) 17. Burden, D.J.H.: Deploying embodied AI into virtual worlds. Knowledge-Based Systems 22, 540–544 (2009) 18. Ullrich, S., Bruegmann, K., Prendinger, H., Ishizuka, M.: Extending MPML3D to Second Life. In: H. Prendinger, J. Lester, M. Ishizuka (eds.) Intelligent Virtual Agents, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 5208, pp. 281–288. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg (2008) 19. Jan, D., Roque, A., Leuski, A., Morie, J., Traum, D.: A virtual tour guide for virtual worlds. In: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA ’09, pp. 372–378. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg (2009) 20. Bogdanovych, A., Rodriguez-Aguilar, J.A., Simoff, S., Cohen, A.: Authentic interactive reenactment of cultural heritage with 3D virtual worlds and artificial intelligence. Applied Artificial Intelligence 24(6), 617–647 (2010

Interfacing a cognitive agent platform with Second Life

Second Life is a multi-purpose online virtual world that provides a rich platform for remote human interaction. It is increasingly being used as a simulation platform to model complex human interactions in diverse areas, as well as to simulate multi-agent systems. It would therefore be beneficial to provide techniques allowing high-level agent development tools, especially cognitive agent platforms such as belief-desire-intention (BDI) programming frameworks, to be interfaced to Second Life. This is not a trivial task as it involves mapping potentially unreliable sensor readings from complex Second Life simulations to a domain-specific abstract logical model of observed properties and/or events. This paper investigates this problem in the context of agent interactions in a multi-agent system simulated in Second Life. We present a framework which facilitates the connection of any multi-agent platform with Second Life, and demonstrate it in conjunction with an extension of the Jason BDI interpreter.Unpublished1. Linden Lab. Second Life Home Page. http://secondlife.com 2. OpenMetaverse Organization. libopenmetaverse developer wiki. http://lib.openmetaverse.org/wiki/Main_Page 3. Ranathunga, S., Cranefield, S., Purvis, M.: Integrating Expectation Handling into Jason. Discussion Paper 2011/03, Department of Information Science, University of Otago (2011). http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/1093/ 4. Cranefield, S., Winikoff, M.: Verifying social expectations by model checking truncated paths. Journal of Logic and Computation (2010). Advance access, doi:10.1093/logcom/exq055 5. Veksler, V.D.: Second Life as a Simulation Environment: Rich, high-fidelity world, minus the hassles. In: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of Cognitive Modeling (2009) 6. Weitnauer, E., Thomas, N., Rabe, F., Kopp, S.: Intelligent agents living in social virtual environments bringing Max into Second Life. In: H. Prendinger, J. Lester, M. Ishizuka (eds.) Intelligent Virtual Agents, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 5208, pp. 552–553. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg (2008) 7. Bordini, R.H., Hubner, J.F., Wooldridge, M.: Programming Multi-Agent Systems in AgentSpeak using Jason. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, England (2007) 8. EsperTech. Esper Tutorial. http://esper.codehaus.org/tutorials/tutorial/tutorial.html 9. Vstex Company. SecondFootball Home Page. http://www.secondfootball.com 10. Varvello, M., Picconi, F., Diot, C., Biersack, E.: Is there life in Second Life? In: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM CoNEXT Conference, CoNEXT ’08, pp. 1:1–1:12. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2008) 11. Eno, J., Gauch, S., Thompson, C.: Intelligent crawling in virtual worlds. In: Pro- ceedings of the 2009 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology - Volume 03, WI-IAT ’09, pp. 555–558. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA (2009) 12. Kappe, F., Zaka, B., Steurer, M.: Automatically detecting points of interest and social networks from tracking positions of avatars in a virtual world. In: Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Advances in Social Network Analysis and Mining, pp. 89–94. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA (2009) 13. Friedman, D., Steed, A., Slater, M.: Spatial social behavior in Second Life. In: C. Pelachaud, J.C. Martin, E. Andr, G. Chollet, K. Karpouzis, D. Pel (eds.) Intelligent Virtual Agents, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4722, pp. 252–263. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg (2007) 14. Yee, N., Bailenson, J.N., D, P., Urbanek, M., Chang, F., Merget, D.: The unbearable likeness of being digital; the persistence of nonverbal social norms in online virtual environments. Cyberpsychology and Behavior 10, 115–121 (2007) 15. La, C.A., Michiardi, P.: Characterizing user mobility in Second Life. In: Proceedings of the first workshop on Online social networks, WOSP ’08, pp. 79–84. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2008) 16. Cranefield, S., Li, G.: Monitoring social expectations in Second Life. In: J. Padget, A. Artikis, W. Vasconcelos, K. Stathis, V. Silva, E. Matson, A. Polleres (eds.) Coordination, Organizations, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems V, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 6069, pp. 133–146. Springer (2010) 17. Burden, D.J.H.: Deploying embodied AI into virtual worlds. Knowledge-Based Systems 22, 540–544 (2009) 18. Ullrich, S., Bruegmann, K., Prendinger, H., Ishizuka, M.: Extending MPML3D to Second Life. In: H. Prendinger, J. Lester, M. Ishizuka (eds.) Intelligent Virtual Agents, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 5208, pp. 281–288. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg (2008) 19. Jan, D., Roque, A., Leuski, A., Morie, J., Traum, D.: A virtual tour guide for virtual worlds. In: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA ’09, pp. 372–378. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg (2009) 20. Bogdanovych, A., Rodriguez-Aguilar, J.A., Simoff, S., Cohen, A.: Authentic interactive reenactment of cultural heritage with 3D virtual worlds and artificial intelligence. Applied Artificial Intelligence 24(6), 617–647 (2010