A method to bridge the gap between affordance formalisation and visual simulation in virtual environment

Thierry Morineau (1) , Emmanuel Frenod (2, 3)

1 CRPCC EA 1285 - Centre de Recherches en Psychologie Cognition et Communication
2 Lab-STICC - Laboratoire des sciences et techniques de l'information, de la communication et de la connaissance (UMR 3192)
3 CALVI - Scientific computation and visualization

Recently, Wells suggested using the formalism of the Turing Machine to describe the concept of affordance. Even though the author has shown that the generic properties of the concept were taken into account in this modelling, no research has yet attempted to model adaptive behaviour in an ecosystem with this formalism. In this paper, we propose to facilitate the passage from an abstract model of affordance through the Turing Machine to a concrete simulation of the model within a Virtual Environment. This simulation makes the direct observation of the emergence of interaction between a human or animal agent and some relevant patterns of sensorial information coming from the surroundings (sensorial invariants) possible. After a presentation of the different stages of the modelling method, we illustrate it by applying it to a basic ecological situation: the predation behaviour of the tick (Ixodes Ricinus). This modelling effort enables us to envisage the potentialities, the limits and the issues of this framework.

Mots clés: tick; affordance; modelling method; Turing Machine; Virtual Reality; tick.

Domaines: Psychologie; Modélisation et simulation

Thierry Morineau, Emmanuel Frenod. A method to bridge the gap between affordance formalisation and visual simulation in virtual environment. European Journal of Scientific Research, 2009, 33 (1), pp.130--143. ⟨hal-00369151⟩