Controlling virtual autonomous entities in dynamic environments using an appropriate sense-plan-control paradigm

Research in path planning, motion control, and sensing is well-developed in robotics. The purpose of this paper is to show how general ideas from this area can be used for navigation of virtual autonomous entities in partially known dynamic environments. The basic idea is to consider the virtual entity as a "Virtual Robot" controlled using a layered navigation system combining a general path planner, a motion controller and a simulated perception system. Particularly, we address our initial implementation for the case of a human character. In this scheme, the motion synthesis of the different components of the articulated character is performed in real-time using computer graphic techniques. The path planner is based on the Ariadne's Clew Algorithm (ACA). We propose a multi-purpose object oriented implementation of the ACA able to solve different path planning problems: path-planning in the map of a large-scale environment, avoidance of unexpected obstacles while following a path, manipulation of movable objects and inverse kinematics. A simple decisional process is proposed in order to drive our path planner, the motion controller and the perception system.