Keeping watch: Intelligent virtual agents reflecting human-like perception in cooperative information systems

A matter pending in Intelligent Virtual Agents Systems (IVAS) and multi-Intelligent Virtual Agents Systems (mIVAS) is to introduce human-like sensitive perception. Within the cognitive research area there are many studies underwritting that human perception can be understood as a first level of an "awareness model" [6,7]. Following these researches, we have developed a human-like perceptual model based on one of the most successful awareness models in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), called the Spatial Model of Interaction (SMI) [1], which manage awareness in Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) through a set of key concepts. This perceptual model extends the key concepts of the SMI introducing some human-like factors typical from human being perception as well as it makes a reinterpretation with the aim of introducing them as the key concepts of a IVA's human-like perceptual model.