Feeling and Reasoning: A Computational Model for Emotional Characters

Interactive virtual environments (IVEs) are now seen as an engaging new way by which children learn experimental sciences and other disciplines. These environments are populated by synthetic characters that guide and stimulate the children activities. In order to build such environments, one needs to address the problem of how achieve believable and empathic characters that act autonomously. Inspired by the work of traditional character animators, this paper proposes an architectural model to build autonomous characters where the agent’s reasoning and behaviour is influenced by its emotional state and personality. We performed a small case evaluation in order to determine if the characters evoked empathic reactions in the users with positive results.