In this chapter22 we will present the properties our Behaviours Virtual Laboratory
(BVL). We will first describe virtual labs and in the following sections we will describe the
components of ours: the virtual environment, the animats, and the interface.
We programmed our BVL in Java, using its External Authoring Interface (EAI) to
control objects on a VRML world. This allows users to access the BVL through the Internet.
Our BVL can be accessed and/or downloaded (source code included) in the URL
http://132.248.11.4∕~carlos∕asia∕bvl
5.1. Virtual Labs and Behaviours Virtual Labs
Virtual laboratories have been developed in different areas, to reproduce experiments
that were made in physical laboratories. Virtual labs are useful for prepractice and postanalysis
of experiments developed in physical labs, and in some cases they can replace the physical lab
itself. Although virtual labs may have many limitations, they have many advantages over
physical labs. For example, some physical labs have scarcity of resources (in equipment and
staff), limiting the researcher's performance. Virtual labs have relatively low costs, experiments
can easily be repeated, and there are no inconveniences in failing experiments, because the
virtual environment is controlled, and there are no risks for natural systems. It is desirable that
virtual labs exploit the advantages of virtual reality, multimedia, and the Internet. Virtual labs
have been developed for different areas, such as physics, electronics, robotics, physiology,
chemistry, engineering, economics, and ecology.
We believe that there should be also development of virtual labs in the area of ethology.
We name these Behaviours Virtual Laboratories (BVL). This development would benefit both
ethology and behaviour-based systems. To ethology, a virtual lab would help reproduce with
ease experimental and natural conditions that could take even weeks to develop in a physical
lab. For example, some kinds of conditioning in animals take days of training, while in a virtual
lab, this process may be accelerated, saved, and recovered. For artificial intelligence
researchers, a virtual lab would help design and test systems and mechanisms of robots,
software agents, or animats.
A BVL should be capable of achieving the same conditions that are found in an ethology
physical laboratory, and even provide better development of the experiments. A Behaviours
Virtual Laboratory would be useful to design bottom-up autonomous agents or robots, propose
and test animal behaviour theories, reproduce behaviour patterns from experimental data, and
easily produce lesions in different structures and mechanisms of the animats, amongst other
questions. Unlike other types of virtual labs, a BVL should be capable of producing
unpredictable results, allowing emergent behaviours to arise. With all these properties, a BVL
should induce researchers to "think adaptively". This is, to easily show the properties and
characteristics of adaptive behaviour, without the need of complex experimentations or heavy
research, in an interactive way.
22Parts of this chapter are a restructuration of Gershenson, Gonzalez, and Negrete (2000b).
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