IAgent: a real time intelligent agent animation toolkit

Abstract

This paper describes the design and implementation of IAgent: a real time intelligent agent animation toolkit on a PC platform. The animation system consists of 5 main components, namely environment, perception, behaviours, motion generator and rendering. The intelligent agent in the system is represented as a 3D human-like avatar that has a complex underlying structure with multiple degrees of freedom (DOFs). The agent relies on a fast virtual perception system to capture information from its environment and a behaviours system to determine what actions should be taken. A novel motion generation architecture and animation blending system have been developed to produce non-repetitive behaviours for the intelligent agent based on its momentary goal, internal and emotional states. The proposed system has been implemented in DirectX. Experiments have been carried out using the toolkit and the results have clearly demonstrated that the method produces convincing real time behaviours for a 3D virtual human agent.