Entertainment gaming researchers and engineers have given much attention to developing technological advances aimed at drawing humans more and more into the game world, through head mounted displays, 3D body tracking sensors, and haptic user interfaces. In a parallel and equally exciting area of research, roboticists and artificial intelligence scholars have been investigating theoretical and algorithmic frameworks to make robots work safely and effectively in the real world, in military, industrial, medical, and domestic applications. Connecting these domains through an intelligent, immersive virtual reality environment will enable the discovery of novel paradigms for establishing a more responsive man–machine cooperation. This talk will discuss the development of a unified framework capable of merging an artificially intelligent environment with an immersive virtual one, in a manner that both environments become aware of their user's motives and intentions, while drawing the human operators to intuitively engage with the environment and intelligent agents within.
