Direct Manipulation Like Tools for Designing Intelligent Virtual Agents

If intelligent virtual agents are to become widely adopted it is vital that they can be designed using the user friendly graphical tools that are used in other areas of graphics. However, extending this sort of tool to autonomous, interactive behaviour, an area with more in common with artificial intelligence, is not trivial. This paper discusses the issues involved in creating user-friendly design tools for IVAs and proposes an extension of the direct manipulation methodology to IVAs. It also presents an initial implementation of this methodology. As computer graphics techniques progress from research result to wide popular adoption, a key step is the development of easy-to-use tools. A well known example in the last decade has been the development of HTML handling tools from simple text editors to graphical tools. These tools radically change the way in which graphical content is produced. They remove the need for programming ability and the concern with syntactic detail that is required by textual tools. They shift the focus to the purely graphical/artistic factors that are really central to graphics production. They allow professional artists (designers) to express themselves to the best of their abilities. They also enable amateurs access to the technology, enabling end-user content-creation and also content creation by nonartistic professionals such as educationalists or scientists. They remove the need for a programmer to be involved in the production process, thus putting more of the process in the hands of the artists or designer. Thus the development of easy to use tools is vital to any aspect of graphics research. One of the most interesting and active areas of research in the graphics field in recent years has been in intelligent virtual agents. The distinguishing feature of intelligent agents is that they have proactive behaviour, and they respond autonomously to their environment. In research terms they lie on the boundary between graphics and artificial intelligence. They are used many in applications such as multi-user on-line worlds, computer games, health and therapy systems, interactive education environments and e-commerce[1]. IVAs can exhibit many types of behaviour, we focus on Non-Verbal Communication (NVC), and in particular posture and gestures, which are important expressive elements in social ? This work has been supported by BT plc, and the EU FET PRESENCIA project IST-2001-37927