Modelling Intention Recognition for Intelligent Agent Systems

Abstract : Mainstream visual psychology presents a sense then infer' account of vision that is analogous to the sense then infer' processing that characterises the agent intention recognition literature. From ecological psychology comes Gibson's theory of visual perception that highlights the importance of the environment in explaining the nature of vision and recognition and claims that higher order structures are directly accessible. This theory can be used as the stepping-off point for an account of intention recognition and the means by which it might be modelled. Furthermore, the capacity for virtual environments to be designed agent friendly' provides yet another dimension of design freedom. When accompanied by an explicit model of perception the intention recognition problem can be cast as a software design problem. The resulting design patterns provide useful options for modeling intention recognition in intelligent agent systems.