A method to bridge the gap between affordance formalisation and visual simulation in virtual environment

Affordance Modelling and Simulation 2 Abstract Recently, Wells (2002) suggested using the formalism of the Turing Machine to describe the concept of affordance. Even though the author has shown that the generic properties of the concept were taken into account in this modelling, no research has yet attempted to model adaptive behaviour in an ecosystem with this formalism. In this paper, we propose to facilitate the passage from an abstract model of affordance through the Turing Machine to a concrete simulation of the model within a Virtual Environment. This simulation makes the direct observation of the emergence of interaction between a human or animal agent and some relevant patterns of sensorial information coming from the surroundings (sensorial invariants) possible. After a presentation of the different stages of the modelling method, we illustrate it by applying it to a basic ecological situation: the predation behaviour of the tick (Ixodes Ricinus). This modelling effort enables us to envisage the potentialities, the limits and the issues of this framework.