Affective synthetic characters

We have long wanted to create artifacts that resemble us: artifacts that not only look like us, but act, think and feel like us, with which we can have sympathy and empathy. In particular, the purpose of this thesis work is twofold: One is to understand animal behavior, the role of the motivation system and of affect, in terms of the theory embodied in the software architecture for modeling interactive synthetic characters. The other is a practical one: to build believable synthetic characters that we can interact with, utilizing our best understanding of animal behavior in creating characters that are perceived as sympathetic and empathetic to humans. We have done this with the help of a specific understanding of the roles of the motivation and affect systems of animals. To accomplish these goals, I propose a creature kernel model which is largely based on the approach of Blumberg [7]. The creature kernel is modeled as a sum of four main parts, the perception, motivation, behavior and motor systems. Among these four components, despite the fact that the motivation system plays a crucial role in daily survival of creatures in nature, its functional importance has often been neglected in attempts to create intelligent artifacts because it has been thought of as the "opposite" of rationality. Thus, in the system proposed in this thesis, emphasis is placed on the roles of the motivation system and how it acts as the integrator of the four parts of the creature kernel, and enables a creature to exist as a functional whole. The plausibility of the proposed system is demonstrated through two projects, for which the characters were built using the creature kernel. The first project is called Sydney K9.0, in which the main

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2000

Author dc:creator

• Yoon, Song-Yee, 1975-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Gerald E. Schneider and Bruce M. Blumberg.

• Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/16701

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/16701