Motor planning: An architecture for specifying and controlling the behaviour of virtual actors

Abstract

As virtual worlds become increasingly complex, task level interaction with virtual actors becomes correspondingly important. The control problem simply becomes unmanageable if we try to interact with synthetic agents at the wrong level of abstraction. However, it is not sufficient merely to implement a set of behaviours for a virtual actor; we require some mechanism for selecting and sequencing motor skills appropriate to the current behavioural goals and the states of other objects and actors in the virtual environment. In this paper we will describe a mechanism for linking perception and action to generate routine behaviours in a process we call motor planning. We present our implementation of the skill network, in which motor skills are the nodes and the arcs represent inhibitory and excitatory connections, including extensions to this architecture based on recent work in robotics. We characterize the domain of motor planning, i.e. what kinds of behaviour can it account for, and when will it fail? We close with a discussion of the limits of our current implementation and work that remains to be done.

Comparing and Evaluating Real Time Character Engines for Virtual Environments

“…This approach is called procedural animation. Much early work on animation took this approach for example the work of Zeltzer and Johnson (1991) or Perlin (1995), but this approach lost popularity due to its inability to match the realism and expressiveness of data driven animation. However, recent years have seen a partial revival for example Kopp and Wachsmuth (2004)'s work on generating gesture based on a statistical model of movement or Neff and Fiume (2006)'s work on aesthetic stance.…”

Sistemas inteligentes de navegação autonoma

“…Diversos outros modelos de robótica baseados em comportamentos têm sido propostos (ALBUS et al, 1982,.ARKIN, 1987KAELBLING & ROSENSCHEIN, 1991;MAES, 1990;CONNEL, 1989;FIRBY, 1989;ROSENBLATT & PAYTON, 1989, ZELTZER & JOHNSON, 1991KAHN, 1991, GRUPEN & HENDERSON, 1990, ANDERSON & DONATH, 1991LIM, 1994;SANBORN, 1988;BEKEY & TOMOVIC, 1986;MILLER, 1995;FUKUDA & KUBOTA, 1999), carregando graus diferentes de embasamento em teorias de comportamento natural.…”