Integrating social skills in task-oriented 3D IVA

Abstract

This paper presents a set of mechanisms oriented to incorporate social information into the decision taking of task-oriented 3DIVA. The aim of this approach is to integrate collaborative skills in different character's roles (seller/buyer, worker, pedestrian, etc.) in order to enhance its behavioral animation. The collective intelligence expected in this kind of multi-character domains (e.g. storytelling, urban simulation, interactive games, etc.) requires agents able to dialogue/interact with other characters, to autonomously group/ungroup (according to their goals), or to distribute tasks and coordinate their execution for solving possible conflicts. The social model implemented follows the definitions for collaborative agents, since agents use communicative acts to cooperate. In this context, collaboration derives mainly from two points: team formation (grouping for 3DIVA) and task coordination (reducing dependences between agent activities). Finally, we show the results obtained in 3D multi-character simulations (resource competition), created to verify the social behavior introduced. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.