An effective implementation of agent´s complex actions by reusing primitive motions

The efficient implementation of various physical actions of an agent to respond to dynamically changing situations is essential for the design of a realistic agent in a cyber world. To achieve a maximum diversity in actions, we develop a mechanism that allows composite actions to be constructed by reusing a set of primitive motions and enables an agent to instantly react to changes in the ambient states. Specifically we model an agent´s body in terms of joints, and a primitive or composite motion is performed in a real time. To implement this mechanism, we produce an animation for each basic joint movement and develop a scheme to construct overall motions out of the primitive motions. These motions can be assembled into a plan by which an agent can achieve a goal. In this manner, diverse actions can be implemented without excessive efforts. This approach has conspicuous advantages when constructing a parallel action, e.g., eating while walking, that is, two or more parallel actions can be naturally merged into a parallel action with an arbitration on their priority. We implemented several composite and parallel actions to demonstrate the viability of our approach.