Coordination Components for Collaborative Virtual Environments
A. B. Raposo, A. J. A. da Cruz, C. M. Adriano and L. P.
Magalhães
Computers and Graphics 25(6): 1025-1039
Special Issue on Artificial Life: Towards A New Generation
of Computer Animation
December 2001
Abstract
This paper deals with the behavior of virtual environments from a the
collaboration point-of-view, in which actors (human or virtual beings)
interact and collaborate by means of interdependent tasks. In this sense,
actors may realize tasks that are dependent on tasks performed by
other actors, while the interdependencies between tasks (through resource
management and temporal relations) delineate the overall behavior of a
virtual environment. Our main goal is to propose an approach for the coordination
of those behaviors. Initially a generic study of possible interdependencies
between collaborative tasks is presented, followed by the formal modeling
(using Petri Nets) of coordination mechanisms for those dependencies. In
order to implement such mechanisms, an architecture of reusable and pluggable
coordination components is also introduced. These components are used in
an implementation of a multi-user videogame. The presented approach is
a concrete step to create virtual societies of actors that collaborate
to reach common goals without the risk of getting involved in conflicting
or repetitive tasks.
Keywords
Modeling of behavior, collaborative virtual environment, coordination,
computer-supported cooperative work, software components.