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2000, Lecture Notes in Computer Science
In this paper, we present Gasp, a General Animation and Simulation Platform, whose purpose is to animate autonomous or userdriven agents, and we explain how it can be used for Collaborative V i rtual Reality. First, we explain its architecture, based on the notion of simulation objects or agents associated with a calculation part the behavior. Then we describe how i t is possible to distribute e ciently our agents upon a network in order to share the amount of calculation between several computers. Finally, as the visualisation of a simulation is also a simulation object, we show that our architecture allows us to distribute several visualisations upon a network to share a 3D interactive simulation between several users.
Proceedings of the third international conference on Collaborative virtual environments - CVE '00, 2000
Gasp (General Animation and Simulation Platform) was at first designed to distribute the animation and simulation of multi-agent virtual environments. In the Gasp framework, a virtual world is composed of any number of simulation objects. These simulation objects can be autonomous agents, interactors or user representations. We define interactors as simulation objects which provide information on user input readable by any simulation object. Because simulation objects can read information from any number of other simulation objects, it is then quite easy to design objects on which any number of users (or other simulation objects) can collaborate. As the Gasp run-time kernel can distribute the calculations associated with those simulation objects on different workstations, collaborative virtual environments can easily be built. In this paper, we explain how, in our framework, interactors and interactive objects are distributed for collaborative interactions and how it is possible to build an interactive object from an existing object without changing the code of that object.
… Graphics and Social …, 2004
Proceedings 1998 Australasian Computer Human Interaction Conference. OzCHI'98 (Cat. No.98EX234)
3D-graphics popularity has steadily increased i n a number of areas such as entertainment, scienti c visualization, simulation, and virtual reality. Despite this rapid growth the authoring of animated 3D objects in virtual environments is still by no means trivial. This article presents new concepts of the animated 3 D programming language SAM Solid Agents in Motion and its programming environment. In SAM, the main syntactic objects like agents, rules, and messages are represented as 3D objects. The design of a SAM program is supported b y a d e dicated 3D structure e ditor. The editor allows the de nition and spatial arrangement of SAM agents in a 3D scene by direct manipulation. The paper gives a number of SAM examples, demonstrating the authoring of simple animated virtual 3D scenarios. We thank Waldemar Rosenbach, Ralf Wegener and Rolf Zelder for implementing the SAM system and Volker Paelke and Sophie O'Halloran for proof reading.
Multimedia Tools and Applications, 2005
The use of Virtual Environments as a user interface is essential for certain types of applications, both in education and entertainment. These worlds are even more attractive for the user when they are neither static nor pre-scripted, but have dynamic characteristics and are populated by autonomous entities, also called virtual agents. There has been a lot of research concerning visualization, animation and behavior of virtual agents, but there are no generic architectures, methodologies and tools for the development of intelligent virtual environments, i.e. 3D environments with autonomous virtual agents. In this paper, we present SimHuman, a tool for the construction of virtual worlds with autonomous entities, targeted for a specific group of applications, such as simple simulation systems, virtual environments, educational applications, multimedia presentations, etc. It consists of a programming library and two utilities and it is highly dynamic and configurable, as it is not based on fixed scenes and models. It has embedded characteristics such as Inverse Kinematics, Physically Based Modeling, Collision Detection and Response, and Vision. SimHuman incorporates some important features for designing and building virtual environments and turns out to be an effective tool for interactive 3D applications with virtual agents.
The continuously increasing complexity of computer animations makes it necessary to rely on the knowledge of various experts to cover the different areas of computer graphics and animation. This fact, which can be noted in many areas of scientific working, leads to increasing effort being put into research concerning cooperative working over the internet. However, it still requires substantial effort and time to combine different animation techniques in a common virtual environment. When trying to perform collaborative animation over a network, we often face the problem of having to combine animation systems and applications based on different software and hardware and using incompatible data structures. We present an approach, based on a client-server architecture and employing a VRML-based language as common interchange format, that allows inhomogeneous systems to be easily incorporated into a collaborative animation. The applications can be freed from employing plug-ins or libraries to link into a common animation platform; they keep a local copy of the global scene and only need the ability to export the internal data representation into the so called ”PaVRML” language, the language we use use to exchange data and synchronize the clients. This approach does not only allow a number of practitioners to share their know-how within a common animation without requiring the huge amount of work necessary to port their application to a common platform. It also makes it often possible in the first place to combine the capabilities of different animation systems into a single complex animation. Additionally, we investigate solutions to optimize the network load for real-time applications. In this paper we present preliminary results and discuss the future developments of this ongoing work.
Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics (IEEE Cat. No.03EX693), 2003
A Military-based distributed interactive simulation (DIS) such as ModSAF has been used for many years. Several problems of the DIS-based simulation to support a large and heterogeneous virtual simulation environments have been discovered . To solve these problems, we propose an architectural multiagent-based framework to support a large military-based simulation with 3D visualization using inexpensive game simulators. Several software agents are used to support interoperability between DIS-based military simulation nodes and Unreal Tournament game simulators. An agent is used to reduce DIS traffic to efficiently utilize network bandwidth. It also performs protocol conversion between DIS protocol and a game engine protocol. Additionally, using a multi-agent system, our work is easily expandable to support several network environments and also to support agent-based intelligent operations. Our main contribution is twofold. We use a multi-agent system which is scalable to support our framework. In addition, our framework builds a simulation bridge that enables affordable high-quality 3D viewer node using affordable game simulations for military simulations.
Computers & Graphics, 2008
This paper presents a powerful animation engine for developing applications with embodied animated agents called Maxine. The engine, based on open source tools, allows management of scenes and virtual characters, and pays special attention to multimodal and emotional interaction with the user. Virtual actors are endowed with facial expressions, lip-synch, emotional voice, and they can vary their answers depending on their own emotional state and the relationship with the user during conversation. Maxine virtual agents have been used in several applications: a virtual presenter was employed in MaxinePPT, a specific application developed to allow non-programmers to create 3D presentations easily using classical PowerPoint presentations; a virtual character was also used as an interactive interface to communicate with and control a domotic environment; finally, an interactive pedagogical agent was used to simplify and improve the teaching and practice of Computer Graphics subjects.
Communications of the ACM, 2001
We present extensions to research done at UNC in 3D object warping for collaborative virtual environments (CVEs). 3D objects are dynamically distorted in various ways to give visual cues to the users of a CVE about the actions that are being applied to the objects. Some warps occur with single-user actions; others happen when several users interact with one object collaboratively. We generalize the object warping methods to define 3D user interface techniques we generically call 3D sliders, meaning 3D objects that can be used to inject control information into programs. Unlike sliders in 1D, where the graphical image presents an analog to a physical control, we generalized the notion in both dimensions and in format/style. We do 3D sliders by warping the original object shapes, allowing their forms to retain their original representational value as well. The result is more than 3 degrees of control freedom in 3-space.
2000
Behavioral models offer the ability to simulate autonomous agents like organisms and living beings. Psychological studies have showed that the human behavior can be described by a perception-decisionaction loop, in which the decisional process should integrate several programming paradigms such as real-time, concurrency, and hierarchy. Building such systems for interactive simulation requires the design of a reactive system treating flows of data to and from the environment, and involving task control and preemption. Since a complete mental model based on vision and image processing cannot be constructed in real time using purely geometrical information, higher levels of information are needed in a model of the virtual environment. For example, the autonomous actors of a virtual world would exploit the knowledge of the environment topology to navigate through it. Accordingly, in this paper we present our programminbg environment for real-time behavioral animation which is composed o...
1993
This paper presents GAT!, an animation server that provides for, distributed, potentially collaborative, real time interactive animation in two and three dimensions. The system supports a high level animation language based upon a commands/event paradigm. Examples are given of how the toolkit is being used in a distributed, collaborative geometrical modeling environment. GAT! runs on unix platforms supporting the X-ll windowing environment and using the XS Graphics Libraries.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2009
Agents cannot be decoupled from their environment. An agent perceives and acts in a world and the model of the world influences how the agent makes decisions. Most systems with virtual embodied agents simulate the environment within a specific realization engine such as the graphics engine. As a consequence, these agents are bound to a particular kind of environment which compromises their reusability across different applications. We propose the ION Framework, a framework for simulating virtual environments which separates the simulation environment from the realization engine. In doing so, it facilitates the integration and reuse of the several components of the system. The ION Framework was used to create several 3D virtual worlds populated with autonomous embodied agents that were tested with hundreds of users.
IEEE transactions on …, 2005
2003 International Symposium on VLSI Technology, Systems and Applications. Proceedings of Technical Papers. (IEEE Cat. No.03TH8672), 2004
New technological developments in wireless networks and location-based information systems are greatly affecting the prominent scenarios represented by mobile markets, commercial and industrial organizations, and cooperative social environments. To model and control such complex organizational systems, the use of scientific methodologies, such as participatory simulation and agent-based modeling is becoming increasingly common. Further, users of these collaborative systems demand the availability of sophisticated tools that are able to present visually the results of cooperative simulation activities on the screen of handheld devices. In this context, we have designed and developed a software architecture able to support the execution of agent-based participatory simulation activities, and to render them in a 3D virtual world over wireless devices. We report on several experiments, gathered on the field, showing that the architecture we have developed is able to render, in a timely fashion, on a wireless device, the results of cooperative simulation activities performed by agent-based programming platforms.
… computer animation, 2002
Behavioural models offer the ability to simulate autonomous agents like organisms and living beings. Psychological studies have shown that human behaviour can be described by a perception-decision-action loop, in which the decisional process should integrate several programming paradigms such as real time, concurrency and hierarchy. Building such systems for interactive simulation requires the design of a reactive system treating flows of data to and from the environment, and involving task control and preemption. Since a complete mental model based on vision and image processing cannot be constructed in real time using purely geometrical information, higher levels of information are needed in a model of the virtual environment. For example, the autonomous actors of a virtual world would exploit the knowledge of the environment topology to navigate through it. Accordingly, in this paper we present our programming environment for real-time behavioural animation which is compounded of a general animation and simulation platform, a behavioural modelling language and a scenario-authoring tool. Those tools has been used for different applications such as pedestrian and car driver interaction in urban environments, or a virtual museum populated by a group of visitors.
2013
This demonstration paper presents a space battle simulation, which was designed using the Interaction-Oriented approach IODA, and implemented within the 3D professional game engine Unity. After giving an overview of the simulation, we explain how it was built through a step-by-step setup, and how the use of interactions enable infinite extensions.
… Simulation and Real …, 2005
There has been a growing interest in the application of Collaborative Virtual Environments -CVEs in the WWW (multiplayer games, virtual shopping malls, virtual cities etc). However, most of the existing CVEs supporting systems are tuned to specific tasks and their architecture are, typically, tightly coupled to the applications. This makes any modification to the application dependent on programming, making CVEs construction and extension in large scale a challenging task. The ability to change an application without having to stop it is an importat non-functional requirement for CVEs (extensibility), especially if they are to be provided as web services, available around the clock. This paper presents a novel solution to building and extending CVEs through the integration of interactive non-linear stories and Virtual Reality concepts. With this approach, CVEs applications can be composed as non-linear stories, which can be changed either completely or partly, making it easier for developers to build and/or extend CVEs applications, such as highly dynamic marketing campaigns to 3D virtual malls, customized training courses, etc. The innovative concept of this solution can make the development process of CVEs easier and faster, allowing their production in large scale. Two study cases, a fire fighting training scenario and an art installation scenario are presented in this paper to illustrate how atomic simulations and VEML language can describe CVEs and extend them at runtime.
1994
We present a paradigm and toolkit for rapid prototyping of interactive, animated 3D graphics programs. The paradigm has its roots in declarative programming, emphasizing immutable values, first class functions, and relations, applying these concepts to a broad range of types, including points, vectors, planes, colors, transforms, geometry, and sound. The narrow role of modifiable state in this paradigm allows applications to be run in a collaborative setting (multi-user and multi-computer) without modification.
M3 Simulation is a simulation approach that actively involves real human actors in a virtual reality environment based on multidisciplinary simulation models. This actor based concept aims at integrated simula-tion of complex processes belonging to heterogeneous levels of reality, paying specific attention to real human behavior. The entities of the real system under consideration are represented in a consistent object-oriented way by agents simulated by environmental models. This distributed network-capable implementation of the M3 system combines environmental modeling with the intuitive graphic representation, complex communica-tion and interaction structures of virtual worlds in order to support the process of investigation of complex real world systems.
… and Architectures for …, 2012
This paper reports on ICEA, the Immersive Creation and Edition of Animation platform we developed in order to support easy computer animations. This plug-in allows users to create new animations and to modify existing ones by interacting intuitively within Virtual Environments. The aim of our system is to enable people without computer animation background to design objects' motions and animations through simplified and immersive recording, editing and modification processes. Indeed, ICEA uses the immersive authoring principles, and as such, it offers an alternative to classic 3D animation solutions: users have only to perform actions in the virtual environment using any available interfaces to create animations.
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