Believable decision for virtual actors

This study lies in the context of cognitive ergonomy and virtual engineering. We propose to model and implement the behaviour of autonomous virtual agents, using ideas from psychology (fuzzy cognitive maps, affordances) and neurophysiology (active perception). We describe the basis for a behavioral model imitating human beings\´ perceptive operation. The psychological notion of "affordance" will help us in the construction of cognitive maps for virtual actor\´s behaviour specification. Sensus Alain Berthoz, neurophysiologist, perception is not only an interpretation of sensorial messages: it is also an internal simulation of the action and an anticipation of the consequences of this simulated action. Following neurophysiological experiments on hippocampus in which were observed oscillations permitting prediction of trajectories, our virtual actor simulates its own behaviour in an imaginary space. This simulation in the simulation allows him to predict the consequences of actions. The expected benefit from our model consists in elaborating a believable virtual helmsman within the framework of a virtual sailing ship. We have implemented such a virtual actor in the multi-agent environment oRis.