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About GATE

GATE final publication 2012
Results from the GATE research project
a 75 page overview (pfd 4.7 Mb)

GATE Magazine 2010
a 36-page overview of the GATE project (pdf 5.3 Mb

Research themes:
Theme 1: Modeling the virtual World
Theme 2: Virtual characters
Theme 3: Interacting with the world
Theme 4: Learning with simulated worlds

Pilots:
Pilot Education Story Box
Pilot Education Carkit
Pilot Safety Crisis management
Pilot Healthcare Scottie
Pilot Healthcare Wiihabilitainment

Knowledge Transfer Projects:
Sound Design 
CIGA 
Agecis 
CycART 
VidART
Motion Controller
Compliance
Mobile Learning
Glengarry Glen Ross
CASSIB
EIS
Enriching Geo-Specific Terrain
Pedestrian and Vehicle Traffic Interactions
Semantic Building Blocks for Declarative Virtual World Creation 
Computer Animation for Social Signals and Interactive Behaviors

Address

Center for Advanced Gaming and Simulation
Department of Information and Computing Sciences
Utrecht University
P.O. Box 80089
3508 TB Utrecht
The Netherlands
Tel +31 30 2537088

Acknowledgement

 ICTRegie is a compact, independent organisation consisting of a Supervisory Board, an Advisory Council, a director and a bureau. The Minister of Economic Affairs, and the Minister of Education, Culture and Science bear the political responsibility for ICTRegie. The organisation is supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and SenterNovem.

CIGA

Knowledge Transfer Project
CIGA

Creating intelligent games with agents
 

VSTEP earlier has created several procedure and incident trainings. Virtual humans play a central role in these applications. Technology currently used limits the variability of their behavior and the range of situations they can cope with. Extending behavior and scope can be very time-consuming. There is much need for more autonomous behavior and the creation of generic models for these virtual humans to increase reusability and efficiency. The use of agent technology can contribute to these problems. The CIGA project aims to develop a framework that supports the use of agent technology in building serious games. In order for this goal to succeed we will not just develop some software tools to connect game engines and agent platforms, but will also explicitly support translating the game ontology to the agent ontology and vice versa. Finally it will be important to develop methodologies for game design that take into account the possibilities of intelligent agent behavior.

Intelligent and natural interactions between characters
In order for characters to behave intelligent in a game they have to interact with other characters in a natural way. An important aspect is the communication between the characters and the characters and the trainee. Making the communication look natural, while keeping it very flexible is notoriously hard. An ontology based design of the communication seems to give a good handle on this problem.

Going from scripts to scenes boundaries
The relevance of this research project is both theoretical and practical. Theoretically this research helps to understand the crucial contribution of agent technology in complex systems. Practically it will contribute to the design and implementation possibilities of serious games. The tools and framework developed in this project will support the design of serious games with agents, which will create new possibilities for training that are hard to achieve at the moment without human intervention.

Partners
Utrecht University
VSTEP BV

Contact
Frank Dignum, Utrecht University
F.P.M.Dignum(at)uu.nl

Key Publications
F. Dignum et.al. Games and Agents:Designing Intelligent Gameplay.International Journal of Computer Games Technology. Vol. 2009, pp. 1-18.

J. van Oijen et.al. Goal-based Communication using BDI Agents as Virtual Humans in Training: An Ontology Driven Dialogue System, Agents for Games and Simulations