Representing and Parameterizing
Embodied Agent Behaviors
Norm
Badler
Department
of Computer and Information Science
Abstract:
The last few years
have seen great maturation in understanding how to use computer graphics
technology to portray 3D embodied [human] virtual agents. Unlike the off-line,
animator-intensive methods used in the special effects industry, real-time
embodied agents are expected to exist and interact with us “live”. They can be represent other people or function
in a live VR environment as autonomous helpers, teammates, or tutors enabling
novel interactive educational and training applications. We should be able to interact and communicate
with them, intentionally or not, through modalities we already use, such as
language, facial expressions, and gesture.
Various aspects and issues in real-time virtual humans will be discussed,
including consistent parameterizations for gesture and facial actions using
movement observation principles, and the representational basis for character believability,
personality, and affect. Our work is
based on a Parameterized Action Representation (PAR) that allows an agent to
act, plan, and reason about its actions or actions of others. Besides embodying the semantics of human
action, the PAR is designed for building future behaviors into autonomous
agents and controlling the animation parameters that portray personality, mood,
and affect in an embodied agent.
Brief Biography:
Norman I. Badler is a Professor of Computer and Information Science
at the University of Pennsylvania and has been on that faculty since 1974.
Active in computer graphics since 1968 with more than 200 technical papers, his
research focuses on human figure animation, embodied agents, and computational
connections between language and action. Badler
received the BA degree in Creative Studies Mathematics from the University of
California at Santa Barbara in 1970, the MSc in
Mathematics in 1971, and the Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1975, both from the
University of Toronto. He is Co-Editor of the Journal Graphical Models. He was the Cecilia Fitler
Moore Department Chair of Computer and Information Science from 1990-94. He
directs the Center for Human Modeling and Simulation and is also the Director
of the Digital Media Design undergraduate degree program at Penn. Since January 2001 he is also the Associate
Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.