Intelligente Agenten für virtuelle Umgebungen

The univeral advancement of graphics technology, new business models, and the continuing upgrade of global infrastructure are transforming the solitary, platform-centric 3D computing model. With the availability of global information highways intercontinental collaboration using 3D graphics will become part of our daily work routine. The research efforts have been concentrated on determining how the distributed workplace can be transformed into a shared virtual environment. Interaction among people and processes in this virtual world has to be provided and improved. To enhance the usability of our virtual collaborative environment we integrated software agents into it. These agents support the user and his interaction with objects in the virtual world. The main goal includes the implementation of helpers, personal assistants, and tour guides. In this paper, we describe the basic needs for integrating agents into virtual worlds as well as techniques to map live video streams and applications into our VR environment. As a proof of concept, agents controlling the access to virtual rooms have been developed and integrated in a video-textured environment.