Developing virtual heritage applications as normative multiagent systems

The majority of existing virtual heritage applications are focused on detailed 3D reconstruction of historically significant sites and ancient artifacts. Recreating the way of life of ancient people is only considered by some researchers, who employ crowd simulation for this task. Existing crowd simulation algorithms are not suitable for modeling complex individual behaviors and role dependent agent interactions with other participants in the Virtual World. To address this problem we suggest treating 3D Virtual Worlds as Normative Multiagent Systems and propose the Virtual Institutions Methodology to be used for design and deployment of Virtual Worlds that require complex interactions involving both humans and autonomous agents. To highlight the usefulness of this approach we illustrate how Virtual Institutions are employed in the development of the Uruk prototype, which integrates 3D Virtual Worlds and Artificial Intelligence in the domain of cultural heritage.