From decision to action : intentionality, a guide for the specification of intelligent agents' behaviour

This article introduces a reflexion about behavioural specification for interactive and participative agent–based simulation in virtual reality. Within this context, it is necessary to reach a high level of expressivness in order to enforce interactions between the designer and the behavioural model during the in–line prototyping. This requires to consider the need of semantic very early in the design process. The Intentional agent model is here exposed as a possible answer. It relies on a mixed imperative and declarative approach which focuses on the link between decision and action. The design of a tool able to simulate virtual environment implying agents based on this model is discussed.