Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

International AAMAS Workshop on Cognitive Agents for Virtual Environments

CAVE 2012: Cognitive Agents for Virtual Environments pp 17–36Cite as

Decoupling Cognitive Agents and Virtual Environments

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 7764))

Abstract

The development of and accessibility to rich virtual environments, both for recreation and training activities leads to the use of intelligent agents to control avatars (and other entities) in these environments. There is a fundamental tension in such systems between tight integration, for performance and low coupling, for generality, flexibility and extensibility. This paper addresses the engineering issues in connecting agent platforms and other software entities with virtual environments, driven by the following informal requirements: (i) accessibility: we would like (easily) to be able to connect any (legacy) software component with the virtual environment (ii) performance: we want the benefits of decoupling, but not at a high price in performance (iii) distribution: we would like to be able to locate functionality where needed, when necessary, but also be location agnostic otherwise (iv) scalability: we would like to support large-scale and geographically dispersed virtual environments. We start from the position that the basic currency unit of such systems can be events. We describe the Bath Sensor Framework, which is a middleware that attempts to satisfy the above goals and to provide a low-latency linking mechanism between event producers and event consumers, while minimising the effect of coupling of components. We illustrate the framework in two complementary case studies using the Jason agent platform, Second Life and AGAVE (a 3D VE for vehicles). Through these examples, we are able to carry out a preliminary evaluation of the approach against the factors above, against alternative systems and demonstrate effective distributed execution.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   72.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Adobbati, R., Marshall, A.N., Scholer, A., Tejada, S.: Gamebots: A 3d virtual world test-bed for multi-agent research. In: Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Infrastructure for Agents, MAS, and Scalable MAS (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Anderson, J.R., Matessa, M., Lebiere, C.: ACT-R: A theory of higher level cognition and its relation to visual attention. Human Computer Interaction 12(4), 439–462 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Balke, T., De Vos, M., Padget, J., Traskas, D.: On-line reasoning for institutionally-situated bdi agents. In: The 10th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2011, Richland, SC, vol. 3, pp. 1109–1110. International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Bergenhem, C., Huang, Q., Benmimoun, A., Robinson, T.: Challenges of platooning on public motorways. In: 17th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems (2010), http://www.sartre-project.eu/en/publications/Documents/ITS%20WC%20challenges%20of%20platooning%20concept%20and%20modelling%2010%20b.pdf (retrieved November 11, 2012)

  5. Bernstein, D., Vij, D.: Intercloud directory and exchange protocol detail using XMPP and RDF. In: 2010 6th World Congress on Services (SERVICES-1), pp. 431–438 (July 2010)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Bernstein, D., Vij, D.: Using XMPP as a transport in intercloud protocols. In: 2010 the 2nd International Conference on Cloud Computing, CloudComp (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Bogdanovych, A., Esteva, M., Simoff, S., Sierra, C., Berger, H.: A Methodology for Developing Multiagent Systems as 3D Electronic Institutions. In: Luck, M., Padgham, L. (eds.) Agent-Oriented Software Engineering VIII. LNCS, vol. 4951, pp. 103–117. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Bogdanovych, A., Simoff, S., Esteva, M.: Virtual Institutions: Normative Environments Facilitating Imitation Learning in Virtual Agents. In: Prendinger, H., Lester, J.C., Ishizuka, M. (eds.) IVA 2008. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5208, pp. 456–464. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Bogdanovych, A., Simoff, S., Esteva, M., Debenham, J.: Teaching autonomous agents to move in a believable manner within virtual institutions. In: Bramer, M. (ed.) Artificial Intelligence in Theory and Practice II. IFIP, vol. 276, pp. 55–64. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  10. Bordini, R.H., Wooldridge, M., Hübner, J.F.: Programming Multi-Agent Systems in AgentSpeak using Jason (Wiley Series in Agent Technology). John Wiley & Sons (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Brom, C., Bryson, J.J.: Action selection for intelligent systems. In: The European Network for the Advancement of Artificial Cognitive Systems, white paper 044-1 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Brooks, R.A.: Intelligence without representation. Artificial Intelligence 47(1-3), 139–159 (1991)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Brooks, R.A.: How to build complete creatures rather than isolated cognitive simulators. In: Architectures for Intelligence. Lawrence Erlbaum Assosiates, Mahwah (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Bryson, J.J.: Action selection and individuation in agent based modelling. In: Proceedings of AGENT 2003: Challenges of Social Simulation, pp. 317–330 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  15. OASIS Advanced Message Queueing Protocol (AMQP) Technical Committee. Advanced message queuing protocol 1.0. Technical report, OASIS (2012), https://www.amqp.org/resources/download (retrieved 20120416)

  16. Dressler, F., Kargl, F., Ott, J., Tonguz, O., Wischhof, L.: 10402 abstracts collection and executive summary – inter-vehicular communication. In: Inter-Vehicular Communication, Dagstuhl, Germany. Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings, vol. 10402, Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik, Germany (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Ferguson, I.A.: Touring machines: Autonomous agents with attitudes. Computer 25(5), 51–55 (1992)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  18. Fikes, R.E., Hart, P.E., Nilsson, N.J.: Learning and executing generalized robot plans. Artificial Intelligence 3, 251–288 (1972)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. The XMPP Standards Foundation. Extensible messaging and presence protocol(XMPP): Core, and related other RFCs. http://xmpp.org/rfcs/rfc3920.html

  20. The XMPP Standards Foundation. The XMPP standard foundation homepage. http://www.xmpp.org

  21. Fronza, G.: Simulador de um ambiente virtual distribuido multiusuario para batalhas de tanques 3d com inteligencia baseada em agentes BDI. Final year project report (July 2008), http://campeche.inf.furb.br/tccs/2008-I/2008-1-14-ap-germanofronza.pdf , See also http://sourceforge.net/projects/tankcoders/ (retrieved Novebber 11, 2012)

  22. Gemrot, J., Kadlec, R., Bída, M., Burkert, O., Píbil, R., Havlíček, J., Zemčák, L., Šimlovič, J., Vansa, R., Štolba, M., Plch, T., Brom, C.: Pogamut 3 Can Assist Developers in Building AI (Not Only) for Their Videogame Agents. In: Dignum, F., Bradshaw, J., Silverman, B., van Doesburg, W. (eds.) Agents for Games and Simulations. LNCS, vol. 5920, pp. 1–15. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  23. ACT-R Research Group. ACT-R: Theory and architecture of cognition, http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/

  24. The Soar Group. Soar project homepage, http://sitemaker.umich.edu/soar

  25. Jabber-Net. The jabber.net project, http://code.google.com/p/jabber-net

  26. Kumar, S., Chhugani, J., Kim, C., Kim, D., Nguyen, A., Dubey, P., Bienia, C., Kim, Y.: Second life and the new generation of virtual worlds. Computer 41(9), 46–53 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Linden Labs. Second life homepage, http://www.secondlife.com

  28. Mascardi, V., Demergasso, D., Ancona, D.: Languages for programming bdi-style agents: an overview. In: Corradini, F., De Paoli, F., Merelli, E., Omicini, A. (eds.) WOA, pp. 9–15. Pitagora Editrice Bologna (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Müller, J.: The Agent Architecture InteRRaP. In: Müller, J.P. (ed.) The Design of Intelligent Agents. LNCS, vol. 1177, pp. 45–123. Springer, Heidelberg (1996)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  30. OpenMetaverse Organization. libopenmetaverse developer wiki, http://lib.openmetaverse.org/wiki/

  31. Ranathunga, S., Cranefield, S., Purvis, M.: Interfacing a cognitive agent platform with a virtual world: a case study using second life. In: The 10th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2011, vol. 3, pp. 1181–1182. International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Richland (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Ranathunga, S., Cranefield, S., Purvis, M.: Identifying events taking place in second life virtual environments. Applied Artificial Intelligence 26(1-2), 137–181 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Rao, A.S., Georgeff, M.P.: BDI agents: from theory to practice. In: Proceedings of the First Intl. Conference on Multiagent Systems, San Francisco (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  34. Ignite Realtime. The Openfire Project, http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/

  35. Ignite Realtime. The Smack API Project, http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/smack/

  36. Ricci, A., Piunti, M., Viroli, M.: Environment programming in MAS: An artifact-based perspective. Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems 23(2), 158–192 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Van Roy, P.: Self management and the future of software design. Electr. Notes Theor. Comput. Sci. 182, 201–217 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Jive Software. Openfire scalability, http://www.igniterealtime.org/about/OpenfireScalability.pdf (retrieved November 09, 2012)

  39. Stout, L., Murphy, M.A., Goasguen, S.: Kestrel: an XMPP-based framework for many task computing applications. In: Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Many-Task Computing on Grids and Supercomputers, MTAGS 2009, pp. 11:1–11:6. ACM, New York (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  40. In-Band Real Time Text. Xep-301: In-band real time text. Technical report, XMPP Standards Foundation (2012) http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0301.pdf (retrieved April 16, 2012)

  41. van Oijen, J., Vanhée, L., Dignum, F.: CIGA: A Middleware for Intelligent Agents in Virtual Environments. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on the uses of Agents for Education, Games and Simulations (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  42. Veksler, V.D.: Second-life as a simulation environment: Rich, high-fidelity world, minus the hassles. In: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of Cognitive Modeling (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  43. Wagener, J., Spjuth, O., Willighagen, E., Wikberg, J.: XMPP for cloud computing in bioinformatics supporting discovery and invocation of asynchronous web services. BMC Bioinformatics 10(1), 279 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, United Kingdom

    Jeehang Lee, Vincent Baines & Julian Padget

Authors
  1. Jeehang Lee
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Vincent Baines
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Julian Padget
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University, Princetonplein 5, 3508 CC, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Frank Dignum

  2. Department of Software and Computer Science, Charles University, Malostranské nám. 25, 118 00, Prague 1, Czech Republic

    Cyril Brom

  3. EWI, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 4, 2628 CD, Delft, The Netherlands

    Koen Hindriks

  4. Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute, Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus, 153 Arundel Street, S1 2NU, Sheffield, UK

    Martin Beer

  5. Department of Computing, Macquarie University, Herring Road, North Ryde, 2109, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Deborah Richards

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Lee, J., Baines, V., Padget, J. (2013). Decoupling Cognitive Agents and Virtual Environments. In: Dignum, F., Brom, C., Hindriks, K., Beer, M., Richards, D. (eds) Cognitive Agents for Virtual Environments. CAVE 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7764. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36444-0_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36444-0_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-36443-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-36444-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation