Modeling Peripersonal Action Space for Virtual Humans by Learning a Tactile Body Schema

We propose a computational model for building a tactile body schema for a virtual human. The learned body structure of the agent can enable it to acquire a perception of the space surrounding its body, namely its peripersonal space. The model uses tactile and proprioceptive informations and relies on an algorithm which was originally applied with visual and proprioceptive sensor data. As there is not only a technical motivation for devising such a model but also an application of peripersonal action space, an interaction example with a virtual agent is described and the idea of extending the reaching space to a lean-forward space is presented.