System and method for enhancing locative response abilities of autonomous and semi-autonomous agents

A computer-implemented method, comprising:

• receiving, by a computer engine, user input that comprises a query regarding at least one target object in a virtual environment;
• interfacing, via the computer engine, with the virtual environment;
• sensing, via a virtual agent associated with the computer engine, a plurality of candidate landmark objects and the at least one target object in the virtual environment;
• and
• deriving an optimum natural language response describing the location of the at least one target object in response to the query by deriving a set of object pairs in the virtual environment and computing at least one inter-object relation associated with each object pair, deriving a cost computation for each of the plurality of candidate landmark objects, wherein deriving a cost computation for each candidate landmark object includes constructing a cost tree with a plurality of nodes, with each of the plurality of nodes representing a candidate landmark object, and deriving a cost associated with each node, wherein the cost associated with each node is determined by determining a visual area scan cost, a relational scan difficulty factor, a target recognition difficulty cost, a target background contrast cost, a description length penalty factor and a parent node cost, and by determining a minimum response processing cost based on at least one of:
• the respective locations of the at least one target object and at least one of the candidate landmark objects, the respective sizes of the at least one target object and at least one of the candidate landmark objects, the visibility of the at least one target object to the agent from at least one of the candidate landmark objects and a spatial relationship between the at least one target object and at least one of the candidate landmark objects.