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Situated Design of Virtual Worlds Using Rational Agents. Mary Lou Maher and Ning Gu Key Centre of Design Computing and Cognition University of Sydney. Designing Virtual Architecture.
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Situated Design of Virtual Worlds Using Rational Agents Mary Lou Maher and Ning Gu Key Centre of Design Computing and Cognition University of Sydney
Designing Virtual Architecture • Definition: Virtual architecture comprises designed virtual places that support a broad range of human activities. • Current practice: create3D models as place infrastructure with associated behaviors, predefined by designers. • Future: Dynamic and interactive virtual architecture that has physical architecture as roots but goes beyond static 3D modeling and construction.
Situated Design of Virtual Worlds • User-centred approach: dynamically designed and implemented as needed, and without the legacy of persistent infrastructure. • Rational agent (Wooldridge 2000). • Virtual World Agent: each person/user has an associated agent that negotiates and designs virtual worlds based on the current needs.
Foci of Various Agent Models • Reflex agent and utility agent (Russell and Norvig, 1995): a single agent and the reasoning processes involved. • Agent models of 3D virtual worlds(Maher and Gero, 2002): a society of agents, each agent is a component of a virtual world with an existing infrastructure. • Virtual world agent: performs situated design of virtual worlds for each user.
UcVA Agent Communication Agent Part Design Agent Part Components of the virtual world agent
The virtual world agent interprets the world • Interprets sense data from the world: • Sensation: from raw inputs to data for reasoning and learning. • Perception: finds patterns for developing the agent’s concepts. • Conception: assigns meaning to the patterns.
The virtual world agent changes the world • Reasons about changes to the world: • Hypothesising: identifies the design goals for the agent. • Design: generates a design to achieve the design goals. • Action Activation: identifies the actions needed to build the design.
sensors percepts ? environment actions agent effectors Autonomous Agents
Rational Agents Sensors Agent What the world is like now Environment What action I should do now Condition-action rules Effectors
Virtual World Agent Model The World Perception Sensors Conception Hypothesizer Effectors Design Action
Agents as a Production System Rules: Perception Conception Hypothesizer Design Action Facts Sensors Effectors Controller
A Shape Grammar Design Process • Shape grammarformalism (Stiny and Gips 1972, Knight 2000) is a descriptive and generative design language. • Shape rules: Replacement rules using the spatial forms of the designs. • Designs: generated by applying a sequence of shape rules.
Demonstration environment • Active Worlds (AW): a multi-user 3D virtual environment for hosting the virtual world. • Jess: a rule-based production system scripting language for implementing the knowledge core. • Meeting room scenario: represent a person in the virtual world with a UcVA Agent; UcVA agents reason about the dialogues of the avatars; the agents design and construct a meeting room when the avatars decide to have an online meeting.
Meeting Room Scenario • Sensation: assert raw data as facts to the working memory of the agent. • Perception: recognise the keyword “meeting”, and performs a count on the number of the avatars. • Conception: further look at the keyword and its relationships with other percepts like the number of the avatars. • Hypothesising: know the need of having a meeting for two avatars, set a goal to design a meeting room.
Generating Shape Rules Using An Existing Design • The CRC world: a virtual environment for collaborative research supporting meetings/seminars, conferences and exhibition/storage. • Analysis of the CRC world: generate shape rules that capture a specific CRC-World-like style. • Style: the common characteristics of using forms and representing functions.
Generating Shape Rules Using An Existing Design • Generate the plan:
Shape Rules Evolved from the CRC World Plan • Generate the plan: rule 1 and rule 2. • Rule 3 and rule 4.
Shape Rules Evolved from the CRC World Plan • Generate the plan : rule 5 and rule 6. • Rule 7 and rule 8.
Shape Rules Evolved from the CRC World Plan • Generate the plan : rule 9 and rule 10. • Apply rules: step 1 (rule 1 twice); step 2 (rule 3 once); step 3 (rule 2 four times); step 4 (rule 4, 5, 6 and 7 multiple times); step 5 (rule 8 once); step 6 (rule 9 twice); step 7 (rule 10 twice).
Generating the CRC World Plan by Applying Shape Rules • Initial Shape of the CRC world plan.
Generating the CRC World Plan by Applying Shape Rules • Step 1 towards the CRC world plan.
Generating the CRC World Plan by Applying Shape Rules • Step 2 towards the CRC world plan.
Generating the CRC World Plan by Applying Shape Rules • Step 3 towards the CRC world plan.
Generating the CRC World Plan by Applying Shape Rules • Step 4 towards the CRC world plan.
Generating the CRC World Plan by Applying Shape Rules • Step 5 towards the CRC world plan.
Generating the CRC World Plan by Applying Shape Rules • Step 6 towards the CRC world plan.
Generating the CRC World Plan by Applying Shape Rules • Step 7 towards the CRC world plan.
Generating the CRC World Plan by Applying Shape Rules • From initial shape to the CRC world plan.
Replacement Rules for Generating 3D Spatial Volumes • Replace 2D shapes with 3D units:
Replacement Rules for Generating 3D Spatial Volumes • Replace 2D shapes with 3D units:
Generating the CRC World Design by Applying Shape Rules • Generated form of the CRC world :
Generating Rules for Including Functional Objects • “Screen” objects for posting slides. • “Sign” objects on the frame-like walls for attaching web contents. • A floating ring placed in the middle of the room to focus the avatars’ attention for gathering purposes.
Constraints for Applying the Shape Rules • Initial shape: a 8m X 8m square. • For less than 10 people: apply addition rules twice. • For between 10 and 15 people: apply addition rules three times. • For between 15 to 20 people: apply additions rule four times. • Other shape operations: not affected.
Generating a New Design Initial Shape Rule 1 Design State 1 Design State 2
Conclusion • A design grammar can generate a very large design space with relatively few rules. • The design agent model can be used to generate player specific game environments of a specific style. • Interaction with other players can result in a combination of each players design grammar.