Intelligent Virtual Actors That Plan ... to Fail

摘要

In this paper, we propose a new approach to virtual actors for 3D animation, in which the actors' behaviour can generate situations of narrative interest, as a consequence of the "limited rationality" of these actors. The actors behaviour is determined by plans generated in real-time in response to a single goal acting as a narrative drive. We use Heuristic Search Planning (HSP) as a non-optimal planning technique, which generate believable plans, yet susceptible of failure. We discuss the changes required in the representation of preconditions, the role of the heuristic function, and the narrative aspects of "optimal" plans and backtracking. Throughout this paper, we illustrate the discussion with actual examples from a first prototype system.