Thespian: A Decision-Theoretic Framework for Interactive Narrative — Talk by Mei Si, PhD скачать в хорошем качестве

Thespian: A Decision-Theoretic Framework for Interactive Narrative — Talk by Mei Si, PhD

Learn more about ICT at http://ict.usc.edu On May 5, 2010 Mei Si, a research associate at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, gave a presentation to his colleagues at USC ICT. One of the ultimate research goals for Artificial Intelligence is the design of life-like intelligent characters that can interact with us in virtual environments. Si's research explores interactive narratives -- virtual environments that allow a user to play a character in a story and interact with other autonomous characters driven by AI. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in building such virtual environments for pedagogical and entertainment purposes. The design of interactive narrative faces many challenges, where the central challenge arises from the incorporation of interactivity into narrative. User interactivity leads to many alternative paths through the story. Keeping track of all these paths, and making sure that both the story and the portrayal of characters are self-consistent and consistent with the author's intentions, becomes increasingly difficult as the user is given more freedom to interact. Typically, this issue has been addressed by extensive programming effort that hand-tailors the experience. However, the authors of interactive narratives are often not, and should not be restricted to programmers. In this talk, Si presents a multi-agent framework, Thespian, for modeling intelligent virtual characters, monitoring and managing their interactions with the user for creating the author's intended effects. Si discusses how Thespian's authoring procedures are designed to help the authors, especially non-technical authors and traditional writers, craft interactive narratives. Mei Si is a research associate at the Institute for Creative Technologies of the University of Southern California. This fall she will be joining Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as an assistant professor in Cognitive Science.