Equipping a lifelike animated agent with a mind

Abstract

This paper presents a computational mind model for lifelike animated agents. It consists of a motivational system and an emotional system. The motivational system guides an agent’s behaviour by generating goals. The emotional system exerts further control over the agent’s behaviour by regulating and modulating the way that behaviour is undertaken. The mind model is embedded in a layered hierarchical agent architecture that provides a framework and flexible way of modelling these system’s influence on each other, and ultimately on the behaviour of lifelike agents. The mind model together with the agent architecture is implemented using a logical formalism, i.e. the Event Calculus. We have followed this approach to develop and control an animated lifelike agent operating in a virtual campus.