In the IMMEDIATE project, we aim at developing two pilots and two target applications. The first pilot (1) is a a domestic servant, that inhabits a virtual house and is able to move objects around the house and perform simple duties, such as cleaning the house. The second pilot (2) is a virtual sales person, that is able to demonstrate products for sale on demand and may negotiate about particular attributes of the product, such as price and color. As target applications we plan to develop: (1) a cultural heritage application, in particular a virtual environment for material about contemporary art, in which a presentation agent selects material and creates a presentation based on the interests of a user; and (2) a social role playing application, where the user may interact with an agent that may take a particular role. For the social role playing application, we plan to develop a system with which public transport attendants can gain experience with passengers with a variety of attitudes. For example, passengers might be compliant and hand over their ticket, or aggressive and start vandalizing the transport vehicle.

The IMMEDIATE project must result in a collection of reusable primitives to build applications that require complex interactions with embodied conversational agents.

The software platform used for the realization of the target applications of the IMMEDIATE project is the DLP+X3D platform developed by the Intelligent Multimedia Group The Intelligent Multimedia Group is an informal subgroup of the IM&SE section of the Informatics department of the Faculty of Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit. of the Vrije Universiteit. The DLP+X3D platform combines distributed logic programming (DLP) with 3D virtual environments (X3D/VRML) and allows for the development of multiuser virtual environments with autonomous (conversational) agents. See  [DLP],  [Platform],  [Community] and  [STEP].

Over the past six years, our research efforts have focussed on developing models and software architectures for multimedia and hypermedia applications. (A full version of this description, including publications, is available online in the SIKS report (2001)).

This research has resulted in two Ph.D. theses:

• 10/4/2001 -- Structured hypermedia -- a matter of style
• 8/5/2001 -- Diva: Architectural Perspectives on Information Visualization

The intelligent multimedia research theme may be regarded as continuing the hypermedia and visualisation projects described before. Our efforts are directed towards realizing the technology needed for developing intelligent multimedia applications. In particular, we aim for developing demonstrators in the area of embodied conversational agents. See  [Platform]. This work is being done in cooperation with dr. Z. Ruttkay from CWI. The work on the cultural heritage application will be done in cooperation with drs. T. Scholte from the ICN (Dutch Institute for Cultural Heritage).

Apart from publications in international conference proceedings, we have demonstrated our work on the ICT Kenniscongres 2002 in the theme intelligent multimedia.

• year 1: identification of major issues -- pilot applications 1 & 2
• year 2: interpretation and learning -- target application 3
• year 3: repertoire of actions -- target application 4
• year 4: wrap up & thesis