Research interests

My research interests are in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality, with focus on the areas and topics listed below.

Intelligent Virtual Environments. Representation of virtual worlds and virtual objects, in terms of physical structure, appearance, behaviour, semantics and functionality. Real-time operation. Standardization. Interoperability. Large-scale virtual environments. Networked virtual environments. Persistent virtual worlds. Unattended virtual environments. User embodiment and interaction. User presence. Design and monitoring tools.

Intelligent Virtual Agents. Architectures for intelligent virtual agents. Models of perception, action and behaviour generation. Knowledge representation and management. Autonomy, deliberation and planning. Affective virtual agents. Metareasoning for virtual agents. Interaction and communication among virtual agents. Virtual body modelling. Methodologies for the specification of intelligent virtual agent personalities. Protocols for coupling behaviour generation with virtual body models. User-interfaces for Intelligent Virtual Agent applications. Large-scale deployment, monitoring and management.

Intelligent Agent Design and Development. Tools and methodologies for intelligent-agent-oriented design and development. Programming languages for intelligent agent applications. Agent-Oriented Programming. Declarative languages and logic programming in intelligent agent software. Frameworks for intelligent agent development, operation and communication. Component-based design and asynchronous architectures. Standardization of design and development methodologies.

Computer Games. Intelligent virtual agents in computer games. Intelligent virtual environments and massively-multiplayer online games. Models of interaction among human and non-human players. Efficient, real-time world representation and behaviour generation. Persistent and evolving gaming worlds. Immersive interfaces and computer games.