Aggregate dynamics for dense crowd simulation

Abstract

Large dense crowds show aggregate behavior with reduced individual freedom of movement. We present a novel, scalable approach for simulating such crowds, using a dual representation both as discrete agents and as a single continuous system. In the continuous setting, we introduce a novel variational constraint called unilateral incompressibility, to model the large-scale behavior of the crowd, and accelerate inter-agent collision avoidance in dense scenarios. This approach makes it possible to simulate very large, dense crowds composed of up to a hundred thousand agents at nearinteractive rates on desktop computers.

Hybrid Long-Range Collision Avoidance for Crowd Simulation

“…It is important to note that these two weights are not independent. As has been noted by [2] and others, velocity variance decreases at high densities. Thus adding a weight for velocity variance does not affect high density behavior significantly.…”

“…This simple approach produces excellent avoidance results with maximal progress while still being computationally inexpensive. Though similar in spirit to [2], it avoids the need to calculate a global pressure to exert forces.…”

“…Continuum algorithms (e.g. [2]) are ideally suited for medium to high densities, since the continuum assumption holds when pedestrian paths are tightly constrained by the nearby neighbors found at these levels of density. On the other hand, though discrete algorithms can be applied at any density, their computational costs escalate at high densities, along with numerical issues in some cases.…”

“…However, its computational cost increases steeply with the number of distinct goals in the simulation, making this approach unsuitable for interactive crowd simulation where agents may have many diverse goals. Narain et al [2] propose a technique that prevents overcrowding in highly dense crowds, but it relies on purely local information and thus cannot plan around congestion at a large distance.…”

Modeling Agent Social Joint Actions via Micro and Macro Coordination Strategies

“…One common method to the simulation of mass flow is to model pedestrian in a particlelike manner [6], [7]. To the degree that humans are physical entities, and behave like particles, e.g., forming vortices as they move through an aperture [8], these flow-based models have been able to account for certain crowd characteristics.…”