FlexMex: Flexible Multi-Expert Meta-Architecture for Virtual Agents
Résumé
One of the key issues in the field of virtual agents is the design of agent architectures which fulfill the conditions necessary to manage at the same time real-time reactive behaviors and longer term cognitive abilities. We present in this article FlexMex, a flexible multi-expert meta-architecture for virtual agents. The main challenge lies in the structuration and organization of several modules addressing each a specific type of intelligence, each producing its own desires, goals, plans or motivations for behavior. The meta-architecture presented here is at a level which is largely independent of the module contents. The propagation of the behavior proposal through the architecture down to the level of a final decision step has to be in a flexible and manageable manner. We instantiate our proposal in the context of a projecting aiming at animating autonomous actors living in a virtual city, while respecting constraints of credibility, real-time, scalability and reuse of the architecture.