Browsing by Author "Clapworthy, G."

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    Equipping a Lifelike Animated Agent with a Mind
    (Springer, 2001-09-10) Chen, Liming; Bechkoum, K.; Clapworthy, G.
    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.
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    A Logical Approach to High-Level Agent Control
    (ACM, 2001-05-28) Chen, Liming; Bechkoum, K.; Clapworthy, G.
    Recent work in animated human-like agent has made impressive progress toward generating agents with believable appearances and realistic motions for the interactive applications of inhabited virtual worlds. It remains difficult, however, to instruct animated agents to perform specific tasks or take initiatives. This paper addresses the challenge of instructability by introducing cognitive modelling - a novel logical approach based on a highly developed logical theory of actions, i. e. Event Calculus. Cognitive models go beyond behavioural models in that they govern an agent's behaviour by reasoning about its knowledge, actions and events. To facilitate the construction of the language (BSL) from the event calculus formalism. Using BSL, we can specify and agent's domain knowledge, design behaviour controllers and then control the agent's behaviour in terms of goals and/ or goals and/ or user's instructions. This approach allows agent's behaviours to be specified and controlled more naturally and intuitively, more succinctly and at a much highter level of abstraction than would otherwise be possible. It als provides a logical characterisation of planning via abductive reasoning process. Furthermore, we integrate sensing capability into our underlying theoretical framework, thus enabling animated agents to generate appropriate behaviour even in complex, dynamic virtual worlds. An animated human- like interface agent for virtual environments is used to demonstrate the approach. The architecture for implementing the approach is also described.
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    Reconciling Autonomy with Narratives in the Event Calculus
    (AAAI Press, 2001-03-26) Chen, Liming; Bechkoum, K.; Clapworthy, G.
    Developing believable and realistic characters for interactive, computer-based forms of entertainment is a hard work. To make them perform specific tasks or take initiatives given a narrative is even more challenging. In this paper we introduce a novel agent design approach that reconciles autonomy with instructability and narrative in one agent architecture. The approach is based on a highly developed logical theory of action and a powerful highlevel behaviour specification language (BSL) that developed from the underlying logical formalism, i.e. the event calculus. Using BSL, agents’ behaviours can be specified and controlled more naturally and intuitively, more succinctly and at a much higher level of abstraction than would otherwise be possible. We also briefly discuss the implementation issues relevant to this approach.