Anton Bogdanovych

Opening new dimensions for e-Tourism

In this paper we describe an e-Tourism environment that takes a community-driven approach to foster a lively society of travelers who exchange travel experiences, recommend tourism destinations or just listen to catch some interesting gossip. Moreover, business transactions such as booking a trip or getting assistance from travel advisors or community members are constituent parts of this environment. All these happen in an integrated, game-like e-Business application where each e-Tourist is impersonated as an avatar. More precisely, we apply 3D Electronic Institutions, a framework developed and employed in the area of multi-agent systems, to the tourism domain. The system interface is realized by means of a 3D game engine that provides sophisticated 3D visualization and enables humans to interact with the environment. We present “itchy feet”, a prototype implementing this 3D e-Tourism environment to showcase first visual impressions. This new environment is a perfect research playground for examining heterogeneous societies comprising humans and software agents, and their relationship in e-Tourism.

Travel agents vs. online booking : tackling the shortcomings of nowadays online tourism portals

In this paper we present the findings of a study that aims at identifying the reasons that let many people still rely on traditional travel agents instead of booking their trips online. The prime motivation for investigating this issue is that it is impossible to have direct experience with the product prior to consumption in the domain of tourism. The Internet provides a powerful environment for the creation of virtual representations of tourism destinations allowing indirect experience that greatly surpasses the possibilities of traditional travel agents. However, the results of the study show that social interaction with travel agents, their expertise and the possibility to save time on search can be of even higher importance. So, we derived the “best of both sides” and suggest the application of an established methodology in the area of multi-agent systems, namely 3D Electronic Institutions, to the tourism domain in order to satisfy the growing demand on human assistance related to online inquiries and to offer customers cutting-edge visualization facilities.

AUTHENTIC INTERACTIVE REENACTMENT OF CULTURAL HERITAGE WITH 3D VIRTUAL WORLDS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

We investigate an innovative design of information and communications technology for preservation and reenactment of cultures. Through an extensive literature review we identified the key components associated with a culture, among which are the environment, objects, knowledge, and institutions. Based on the acquired knowledge we developed a formal model of culture that builds a computational preservation and simulation of cultures along their multiple dimensions. We present the design of an immersive, intelligent, and interactive computational preservation—3I technology—based on tight fusion of 3D virtual worlds and artificial intelligence techniques. Markedly, virtual agents are central to the proposed model. They are both the knowledge carriers and the links between the environment, objects, and knowledge. For testing the model and supporting technological components we developed a research prototype that simulates the culture of the ancient City of Uruk 3000 B.C. (an essential representative of Sumerian culture in the cradle of civilization) within the virtual world environment of Second Life.

Virtual Agents and 3D Virtual Worlds for Preserving and Simulating Cultures

Many researchers associate a culture with some form of knowledge; other scholars stress the importance of the environment inhabited by the knowledge carriers; while archaeologists learn about cultures through the objects produced in the environment as a result of utilizing this knowledge. In our work we propose a model of virtual culture that preserves the environment, objects and knowledge associated with a certain culture in a 3D Virtual World. We highlight the significance of virtual agents in our model as, on the one hand, being the knowledge carriers and, on the other hand, being an important element establishing the connection between the environment, objects and knowledge. For testing the resulting model we have developed a research prototype simulating the culture of the ancient City of Uruk 3000 B. C. (one of the first human-built cities on Earth) within a Virtual World of Second Life.

Developing virtual heritage applications as normative multiagent systems

The majority of existing virtual heritage applications are focused on detailed 3D reconstruction of historically significant sites and ancient artifacts. Recreating the way of life of ancient people is only considered by some researchers, who employ crowd simulation for this task. Existing crowd simulation algorithms are not suitable for modeling complex individual behaviors and role dependent agent interactions with other participants in the Virtual World. To address this problem we suggest treating 3D Virtual Worlds as Normative Multiagent Systems and propose the Virtual Institutions Methodology to be used for design and deployment of Virtual Worlds that require complex interactions involving both humans and autonomous agents. To highlight the usefulness of this approach we illustrate how Virtual Institutions are employed in the development of the Uruk prototype, which integrates 3D Virtual Worlds and Artificial Intelligence in the domain of cultural heritage.

The city of uruk: teaching ancient history in a virtual world

In this paper we show how 3D Virtual Worlds can be utilised for teaching ancient history. Our goal is to build an accurate replica of one of humanitys first cities in a 3D Virtual World and provide history students with facilities to explore the virtual city and learn about its past in the simulated 3D environment. Unlike the majority of similar historical reconstructions, an important feature of our approach is having virtual agents that are capable of simulating everyday life of ancient inhabitants, which includes common tasks like eating, sleeping, working and communicating with one another. In order to offer educational value the agents act as autonomous tutors and are capable of sensing the students through their avatars and interact with them both in terms of performing joint actions and through verbal communication. We show how such virtual environments can be built, explain the technology behind its artificial intelligence controlled population and highlight the corresponding educational benefits. To validate the impact of using the 3D environment and virtual agents in history education we conducted a case study that confirmed the beneficial educational aspects of our approach.

A methodology for 3D electronic institutions

In this paper we propose a methodology for the construction of 3D electronic institutions. 3D electronic institutions are normative environments where software and human agents can participate and collaborate in a joint 3D Virtual World. The proposed methodology covers the specification of the institutional rules, as well as the design and visualization of 3D environments for the specified institution. It is also supplied with a set of graphical tools that facilitate the development process on every level, from specification to deployment. The resulting system facilitates the direct integration of human users into Multi-Agent Systems as they participate by driving an avatar in the generated 3D environment.

Playing the e-business game in 3D virtual worlds

In this paper we present an integrated, game-like e-Business environment that follows the role model of Massively Multi-User Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). The interface is realized as a 3D virtual world using affordable game engine technology. Our environment provides a platform for conducting business and it is supposed to be a community facilitator to create and establish a lively and sustainable online community involving both, providers and consumers. It is information-rich and multimedia-based offering transparent access to disparate information sources.

Generating diverse ethnic groups with genetic algorithms

Simulating large crowds of virtual agents has become an important problem in virtual reality applications, video games, cinematography and training simulators. In this paper, we show how to achieve a high degree of appearance variation among individual 3D avatars in generated crowds through the use of genetic algorithms, while also manifesting unique characteristic features of a given population group. We show how virtual cities can be populated with diverse crowds of virtual agents that preserve their ethnic features, illustrate how our approach can be used to simulate full body avatar appearance, present a case study and analyze our results.

Intelligent Objects to Facilitate Human Participation in Virtual Institutions

Our research combines electronic institutions and 3D virtual worlds for the construction of virtual institutions which are virtual worlds with normative regulation of interactions. That is, a virtual world where participants actions have to comply with predefined institutional rules. In this context, the actions a participant may perform depend on the institutional rules and the current execution state. We propose to include iObjects, intelligent objects, as entities having both visualization properties and decision mechanisms in the virtual institution. They are a new key element to improve users participation in virtual institutions. We situate them in a middleware infrastructure in order to be independent of 3D virtual world platform and to provide a general solution in which participants could be connected from different immersive environment platforms.