Semantic-based Design Agents in Virtual Environments

This paper presents a developed system of semantic-based design agents in virtual environments to support the architectural design of detached houses. The system consists of agents that have the capacity to recognize design semantics between building objects and their relationships while incrementally learn and update previous knowledge based on users' actions in creating houses in the virtual environment. The System provides designers with the capability to design interactively, test the consequences of actions and to explore different ways of solution refinement which are crucial in designing. The developed System of semantic-based design agents operates within a synchronous multi-users 3D VE namely the Activeworlds platform to support the process of architectural designing.