NEXUS: Fusing the Real & the Virtual

The aim of this project has been to create NEXUS, a framework that supports fusion of the physical and the virtual, creating a single world in which people can interact with deliberative agents in their own space. This work promotes a more orthogonal perspective for the development of artificial systems and their functionality as tools. This NEXUS becomes a place in which virtual and physical information spaces become entwined, resulting in the entities that inhabit this space being able to interact in a seamless fashion. The level of interaction envisaged is not simply a matter of people controlling the form of a virtual space, or even one of artificial entities that control the form of a physical space. Instead, we view the NEXUS as a fusion of physical and virtual spaces in which a number of entities jointly interact. This then facilitates the coherent integration of humans and the digital information space