Æliens

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WASP

Web Agent Support Program

DLP

Distributed Logic Programming

RIF + WASP

• distributed logic programming -- uniform platform
• agent technology -- subsumes multi-user server

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multi-user soccer game

• multiple (human) users -- may join during the game
• multiple agents -- to participate in the game (e.g. as goalkeeper)
• reactivity -- players (users and agents) have to react quickly
• cooperation/competition -- requires 'intelligent' communication
• dynamic behavior -- sufficiently complex 3D scenes, including the dynamic behavior of the ball

control points

• get/set -- position, rotation, viewpoint

agents in virtual environments

• virtual environments with embedded autonomous agents
• virtual environments supported by ACL communication

Living Worlds

• scene -- geometrically bounded, continuously navigable
• world -- collection of (linked) scenes

Shared Object

• pilot -- instance that will be replicated
• drone -- instance that replicates pilot

• pilot agents -- control state of a shared object
• drone agents -- replicate the state of a shared object

• object agents -- controls a single shared object (like the soccerball) pilot at server, drone at client
• controls users' avatar pilot at user side, drone at server or clients
• autonomous agents -- like football player, with own avatar pilot at server, drone at clients

programming platform

• VRML EAI support
• distributed communication capabilities (TCP/IP)
• multiple threads of control -- for multiple shared objects
• declarative language -- for agent support

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taxonomy of agents

• 2D/3D -- to distinguish between text-based and avatar embodied agents
• client/server -- to indicate where agents reside
• single/multi -- as a measure of complexity

PAMELA

Personal Assistent for Multimedia Electronic Archives

• autonomous and on-demand search capabilities
• (user and system) modifiablepreferences
• multimedia presentation facilities

H-Anim

• control points -- joints, limbs and facial features

presentation agent

Given any collection of results, PAMELA could design some spatial layout and select suitableobject types, including for example color-based relevance cues, to present the results in a scene. PAMELA could then navigate you through the scene, indicating the possible relevance of particular results.

persuasion games

• single avatar persuasive argumentation
• multiple avatar dialog games

PAMELA

Persuasive Agent with Multimedia Enlightened Arguments

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A variety of applications may benefit from deploying embodied conversational agents, either in the form of animated humanoid avatars or, more simply, as a 'talking head'. An interesting example is provided by Signing Avatar, a system that allows for translating arbitrary text in both spoken language and sign language for the deaf, presented by animated humanoid avatars.

Here the use of animated avatars is essential to communicate with a particular group of users, using the sign language for the deaf.

STEP

• convenience -- for non-professional authors
• compositional semantics -- combining operations
• re-definability -- for high-level specification of actions
• parametrization -- for the adaptation of actions
• interaction -- with a (virtual) environment

DLP+X3D

The DLP+X3D platform provides together with the STEP scripting language the computational facilities for defining semantically meaningful behaviors and allows for a rich presentational environment, in particular 3D virtual environments that may include streaming video, text and speech.

evaluation criteria

• effective communication

conversational agents in VR

• presentational VR, instructional VR, educational VR

applications

• information agents, presentation agents

system perspective

• range of agent categories, open standards

user perspective

• naturalness -- contextual & emotional