Animated Agents for Procedural Training in Virtual Reality: Perception, Cognition, and Motor Control

This paper describes Steve, an animated agent that helps students learn to perform physical, procedural tasks. The student and Steve cohabit a three-dimensional, simulated mock-up of the student's work environment. Steve can demonstrate how to perform tasks and can also monitor students while they practice tasks, providing assistance when needed. This paper describes Steve's architecture in detail, including perception, cognition, and motor control. The perception module monitors the state of the virtual world, maintains a coherent representation of it, and provides this information to the cognition and motor control modules. The cognition module interprets its perceptual input, chooses appropriate goals, constructs and executes plans to achieve those goals, and sends out motor commands. The motor control module implements these motor commands, controlling Steve's voice, locomotion, gaze, and gestures, and allowing Steve to manipulate objects in the virtual world.