CAREER: Plan-Based Integration of Control and Coherence in Intelligent Exploratory Environments

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Exploratory environments - virtual worlds in which users interact with a simulation of a physical or abstract space to form, pursue and achieve their goals - have shown great success in applications ranging from education and training to entertainment to social interaction. A principal limitation of these systems, however, is that users' activities within them are typically greatly over- or under-constrained. To address this problem, the PI will develop new plan-based models for the structure of user interactions within exploratory environments. Planning techniques will be used to create novel activity within the environment that encompasses both the system-controlled characters, the environment and the actions of the user. The PI will build on his prior work in plan generation and plan-related communication to develop an architecture for creating, monitoring and controlling interaction in intelligent exploratory environments. This architecture will integrate: planning algorithms that create plans for interaction in virtual worlds whose structure is readily understandable by users; discourse generation algorithms that effectively communicate the currently unfolding plan-based activity; and execution monitoring algorithms that mediate the execution of actions between the user interface and the virtual world, intervening in appropriate ways when actions that the user intends to perform deviate from the system's current plan structure. If successful, the work will greatly increase our ability to produce engaging, novel and effective virtual environments in which users' domain- and task-oriented learning are enhanced across a range of applications and contexts.