Study of navigation based on intelligent avatar with mobile virtual reality

Recent advances in wireless communications and the hardware performance of handset devices make possible the combination of navigation technology with mobile virtual reality (MVR). In this paper, we describe a navigation method that uses intelligent avatar (IA) and been realized in a distributed architecture. In the method, complicated A* wayfinding algorithm is applied to obtain the set of smell points (SSP) on PC server (PCS), thereafter handset client (HC) will receive the SSP via wireless network and create an IA to lead the user along the route controlled by the SSP. During navigation, the IA can apperceive the status of user´s avatar in virtual environment regularly and then adjust its travel speed in order to complete harmoniously the navigation task for the user. Furthermore, the rendering of IA adopts the technology of dynamic impostor and the method of distributed rendering. In order to reduce the occupation of wireless network bandwidth, we present two methods and name them as levels of action (LOA) and simple texture compression.