Statusbasierte Verhaltenssteuerung von virtuellen Charakteren

This dissertation presents a novel approach for controlling the behavior of virtual characters that is based on an extension of a social psychological status theory. The research focuses on interactive applications in which the virtual characters should display a behavior that is appropriate to their individual role and the social context. The central assumption is that both socio psychological and dramaturgical concepts are particularly suitable for this task. This dissertation shows how concepts from improvisational theater and meta theater as well as socio psychological status theories can be formalized and used to control the expressive and social behavior of virtual characters in different application areas. For this purpose the Exstasis module was developed that computes the status and the action tendencies of all actors in a situation based on their status characteristics and behavior patterns. Exstasis is a configurable software component that can be integrated in existing systems to extend the social capabilities of the virtual characters. Its applicability is demonstrated in a quiz show scenario, in which the computed status information is used to control the gaze behavior of two virtual characters as well as the course and style of their simulated conversation.