Crowd simulation

A huge challenge is to simulate tens of thousands of characters in real-time where they pro-actively and realistically avoid collisions with each other and with obstacles present in their environment. This environment contains semantic information (e.g. roads and bicycle lanes, dangerous and pleasant areas), is three-dimensional (e.g. contains bridges where people can walk over and under as well) and can dynamically change (e.g. a bridge partially collapses). We currently study how to create a generic data structure, i.e. a navigation mesh, for such environments and how it can be updated dynamically and efficiently. Next, we study how (groups of) people move and avoid collisions in such environments, based on character profiles and semantics. We run our simulations in realistic environments (e.g. soccer stadiums or train stations) and game levels to study the effectiveness of our methods. Finally, we have created a software package that integrates this research, which is validated and applied to many projects in our startup uCrowds.

Simulation of the daily operation around Utrecht Central Station, performed for the municipality of Utrecht.

Overview

An overview on our work on crowd simulation is given in the movie below.

More videos can be found on our YouTube channel.

PhD students

A lot of this research has been carried out by my PhD students Wouter van Toll, Norman Jaklin and Arne Hillebrand.

More information

More information can be found on my research homepage.