•   When: Thursday, October 30, 2014 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
•   Speakers: Jan Allbeck
•   Location: ENGR 4201
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Abstract

Virtual humans have application to a number of domains, including entertainment, training, evacuation analysis, architectural and urban design, epidemiology, public policy, and more. Research in virtual humans is at the crossroads of animation, artificial intelligence, psychology and game design. The goal is the production of 3D animated characters that reasonably represent the behaviors of real humans. These virtual humans need to be able to navigate through the virtual world and have meaningful interactions with objects and other agents found in the world. They should appear to have a rich set of complex behaviors that typify real human behaviors. Furthermore, the behavior of a population of these characters needs to be feasible to author and modify, preferably by non-programmers. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) need to be able to tailor behaviors to achieve the objectives of their simulations without being required to specify every detail of every agent's behavior. In other words, there must be a balance between control and autonomy. To reflect real human populations there also needs to be variation in the behaviors of the virtual humans to reflect individual differences (e.g. personalities, emotion, roles, and relationships). Finally, all of these features must come together in a framework that simulates virtual human behaviors in real-time in complex virtual environments.

Speaker's Biography

Jan M. Allbeck joined the Department of Computer Science in August of 2009 as an assistant professor and faculty advisor for the undergraduate concentration in Computer Game Design. She is also director of the Games and Intelligent Animation Laboratory (GAIA). Prior to joining Mason, she received a Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also received a Master�s degree and served as associate director for the Center for Human Modeling and Simulation for several years. Her Ph.D. advisor was Dr. Norman I. Badler. She also hold a B.A. in Mathematics and B.S. in Computer Science from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.