Communication models for crowd simulation
Author
Küllü, Kurtuluş
Advisor
Güdükbay, Uğur
Date
2017-08Publisher
Bilkent University
Language
English
Type
ThesisItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
Modeling and animation of behaviorally plausible virtual crowds are important
problems of crowd simulation research. We propose a communication model in
order to equip virtual agents with the ability to autonomously communicate with
each other. We investigate whether such a communication model would improve
the plausibility of the simulated crowds. Initially, our efforts were towards a
model that is as human-like as possible and towards combining this model with
an agent architecture that contains psychological attributes. Early experimental
results showed that when we look at a crowd, the influences such as different
agent personalities causing different communicative behavior are hardly visible.
Besides, achieving these effects introduces complexity. Thus, a generic and easyto-
use communication model instead of a human-like one became the target and
psychological agent attributes were dropped.
The proposed communication model and its application in several scenarios are
presented in this dissertation. As a second contribution, one of the application
scenarios led us to develop a planning algorithm for an agent in an unknown
environment. Simulation results are analyzed both visually and by using various
measurements and metrics. Our conclusion is that in addition to improving
observed behavioral variety, the effects of employing the communication model are
clear in the quantitative results and these effects are in line with our expectations
in each scenario.
Keywords
Crowd simulationCommunication model
Agent communication
Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA)
Agent Communication Language (ACL)