Modeling Perceptual Attention in Virtual Humans

This paper describes our efforts to model perceptual attention in virtual humans for the joint synthetic battlefield. With the exception of the work by Reece et al. [19,20] to develop individual combatants, current computer generated forces represent entities at the platform level, hence, the perceptual model of these entities is typically a composite representing the behaviors of multiple humans (e.g., a tank crew). With the growing interest in developing realistic models of human behavior for military simulations [16], a greater emphasis is placed on understanding and representing the behaviors of individual crew members. A composite model of perception and cognition may not be sufficient to provide the desired level of fidelity in a simulation. To be realistic, a model needs to be both psychologically plausible and capable of generating believable behavior. In this paper we describe our efforts to support such capabilities through the development of a flexible, integrated model of perceptual attention in a synthetic helicopter pilot. The model has been developed in a synthetic helicopter pilot [8,9] implemented in Soar, an integrated cognitive architecture.