Creating autonomous, perceptive and intelligent virtual humans in a real-time virtual environment

Creating realistic virtual humans has been a challenging objective in computer science research for some time. This paper describes an integrated framework for modeling virtual humans with a high level of autonomy. The framework seeks to reproduce human-like believable behavior and movement in virtual humans in a virtual environment. The framework includes a visual and auditory information perception module, a decision network based behavior decision module, and a hierarchical autonomous motion control module. These cooperate to model realistic autonomous individual behavior for virtual humans in real-time interactive virtual environments. The framework was tested in a simulated virtual environment system to demonstrate the ability of the framework to create autonomous, perceptive and intelligent virtual humans in real-time virtual environments. © 2011 Tsinghua University Press.