Other Computer Sciences Commons^™

Reinforcement Learning With Motivations For Realistic Agents, Jacquelyne T. Forgette

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Believable virtual humans have important applications in various fields, including computer based video games. The challenge in programming video games is to produce a non-player controlled character that is autonomous, and capable of action selections that appear human. In this thesis, motivations are used as a basis for learning using reinforcements. With motives driving the decisions of the agents, their actions will appear less structured and repetitious, and more human in nature. This will also allow developers to easily create game agents with specific motivations, based mostly on their narrative purposes. With minimum and maximum desirable motive values, the agents …