A cognitive architecture for simulating bodies and minds

This paper presents an overview of a cognitive architecture, OntoAgent, that supports the creation and deployment of intelligent agents capable of simulating human-like abilities. The agents, which have a simulated mind and, if applicable, a simulated body, are intended to operate as members of multi-agent teams featuring both artificial and human agents. The agent architecture and its underlying knowledge resources and processors are being developed in a sufficiently generic way to support a variety of applications. In this paper we briefly describe the architecture and two applications being configured within it: the Maryland Virtual Patient (MVP) system for training medical personnel and the CLinician's ADvisor (CLAD). We organize the discussion around four aspects of agent modeling and how they are utilized in the two applications: physiological simulation, modeling an agent's knowledge and learning, decision-making and language processing.