Reactive agent based planning for an avatar

Complex product design using CAD tools is commonplace, but these tools often lack important human factors information. Virtual reality (VR) tools now include avatars for human factors analysis. However these require the user to interactively position the avatar to reach for objects. We describe how adding an advanced motion planner can allow the avatar to reach and grasp automatically. The method is based on a reactive agent planner. We show the limitations of tile planner and its environmental representation when used in a 3D environment and show how the problems can be reduced to a planar 2D problem.