Modeling communicative virtual agents based on joint activity theory

In order to produce agents which are effective social actors, behavior must be modeled in an appropriate way. Models exist for a wide range of agent components, but this paper focuses on communication through body expression. Additionally, rather than formulating communication models from scratch, this paper discusses modeling of agents based on existing communication theory in the real world. In this case, Herbert Clark's joint activity theory is used, where each collaborative act is regarded as a joint project between one or more parties. The generalized model is defined and its first implementation in the form of a virtual basketball game is also described. The use of a game provides an ideal testbed for the analysis of communication using Clark's theory.