An intelligent guide for virtual environments

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In T. H. White's famous retelling of the Arthurian legend, the aged wizard Merlyn is tutor to the young boy Wart, who will grow up to b e King Arthur. Through his magic, Merlyn changes Wart into different creatures and transports him to alien environments so he can learn about worlds other than his own. In this paper, we introduce Merlyn as an autonomous intelligent agent, whose purpose is to be a guide and companion to children in their explorations of virtual worlds. Merlyn h as an integrated p ersonality and variable moods, so he will be a companion rather than a tool for the c hild's use. We discuss how Merlyn operates in "annotated environments," where the perceived world is reflected in data structures directly accessible to a broad variety of agents. Merlyn becomes more knowledgeable a bout such worlds as he travels with the c hild, and he ca n u se these annotations to guide his choice of interactions. Annotations also allow Merlyn to "endow" the child with environment-specific ca pabilities to guide the child's experiential l earning. Merlyn is also capable of monitoring the c hild's interests and abilities, and tailoring h is personality and actions to them. With Merlyn as a c ompanion, a c hild can be guided into strategically-chosen learning activities while having a friendly, entertaining experience in the virtual environment.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: