Research in virtual human simulation has seen a dramatic rise in recent years with widespread applicability in games, visual effects, education and urban simulations. Going forward, the problems we face are three-fold: First, a unified framework for efficiently simulating functional, purposeful autonomous virtual humans is yet to be realized. Second, it is particularly challenging to evaluate massive simulations of autonomous agents. Third, there exists no appropriate interface to allow end-users to author complex interactions between autonomous actors that populate the simulated environment....

This volume presents novel computational models for representing digital humans and their interactions with other virtual characters and meaningful environments. In this context, we describe efficient algorithms to animate, control, and author human-like agents having their own set of unique capabilities, personalities, and desires. We begin with the lowest level of footstep determination to steer agents in collision-free paths. Steering choices are controlled by navigation in complex environments, including multi-domain planning with dynamically changing situations. Virtual agents are given...

Path planning and navigation are indispensable components for controlling autonomous agents in interactive virtual worlds. Given the growing demands on the size and complexity of modern virtual worlds, a number of new techniques have been developed for achieving intelligent navigation for the next generation of interactive multi-agent simulations. This book reviews the evolution of several related techniques, starting from classical planning and computational geometry techniques and then gradually moving toward more advanced topics with focus on recent developments from the work of the...