Study On Supporting Technology In Virtual Learning Environment

Virtual agent is a key component of virtual environment, which can increase the reality and immersive feeling of the scene. In general, a virtual agent can be regarded as an autonomous agent with sense, perception, emotion, behavior and action. Emotion is the interactive result of the virtual character and virtual environment. A virtual character has emotions which can greatly enhance the reality of the scene. This paper presents an emotional model of virtual character. An virtual character has internal sensor and perception for external stimulus, and express motion autonomously in real time.The architecture and the animation model of virtual character are discussed in this paper.Virtual characters' body is defined in terms of joints and segments in 3D VLE. A virtual character is composed by many modules, including sense module, perception module, plan module, behavior module and the decision-making module of the emotion. These modules are integrated into a system. The sense model receives external stimulus information. After filtered the unimportant information, the mind model sends this information to the decision-making model of the emotion. The decision-making model of the emotion decides what sort of emotion should be selected according to the defined rules.This paper also presents an approach to realize the mind of virtual character. The mind is made by JESS (Java Expert System Shell). According to the rules in the knowledge date base and the information sensed by sensors, the mind will determine whether the new incremental matrix should be produced.The new concept of the decision-making model of the emotion is also introduced and used. This model is based on the OCC emotion model. According to the speciality of the virtual character, the decision-making model of the emotion deduces a personality matrix and emotional personality matrix. Having received the valid information, the mind then turns information into incremental matrix. These three matrixes determine the emotion changes of virtual character.The architecture and methods described above could be adopted within AgentLib in Virtual Learning Environment. At last, a prototype system would be realized on PC, that is supported by the Education Office of Zhejiang Province.