Cross-platform management of intelligent objects behaviors in serious virtual environments

In this paper, we present a generic interaction framework that controls intelligent objects' actions in different virtual world (VW) platforms. These actions are based on the state of external platform-independent artificial intelligence-based systems such as multi-agent and rule-based systems. We have evaluated the proposed framework by means of two intelligent objects, a door and a noticeboard, incorporating them in Second Life and OpenWonderland VWs. These objects allow to work along three advanced aspects of a serious virtual environment: it is a dynamic space where participants are synchronously informed about activities evolution inside the virtual space, it can integrate processes and information coming from the real world, and it needs norms to organize participants actions, to define actions consequences, and to prevent undesired participants behaviors. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.