Achievement

IGERT students from Psychology and Computer Science, worked in the Integrative Methods in Perceptual Science course on a project that combines computer graphics, machine learning and human perception. The students developed an interactive virtual environment, populated by intelligent virtual agents. Each agent is programmed with perception, planning, memory, and goals. Agents interact, fight, and compete for food. The creation of this environment is a key component of the IGERT educational goals because it has strong cross-disciplinary components: computational (modeling the agents' behavior), as well as human perception (human subjects are tested to determine their perception of the agents goals and actions). The students worked as a team, dividing project tasks while at the same time learning and interacting with one another. The project is more than a lab exercise. It is providing a platform for innovative original cross-disciplinary research.