Digital Characters in the Real World

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2004 in the subject Computer Science - Applied, grade: 1,0, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg (Institut fur Simulation und Grafik), language: English, abstract: Recent research has concentrated on the question how virtual characters ( agents') and their set of reaction can be enhanced to better suit a certain purpose in a virtual reality environment (VRE). Another field of active research is augmented reality (AR), where computer generated graphics is superimposed over a real world image. Thus AR is able to add detail and enhance the underlying information. Our idea is to create an augmented reality environment (ARE) with an agent for conversation centred areas such as presentations. Our goal is to find evidence in literature and research how agents are employed as effective means of communication. This includes a review of existing systems and a summary of user studies. We will a look at combining AR technology with agents, and what special issues arise. With this background we will develop design objectives and requirements of agents in AR. A prototype implementation of an agent architecture with a digital character as user front-end will be implemented. From our literature review and our practical implementation we will identify a list of fruitful areas of research and derive a list of challenging new questions.