Immersive human-in-the-loop HMD evaluation of dynamic group behavior in a pedestrian crowd simulation that uses group agent-based steering

• Authors: Francisco Arturo Rojas;Hyun Seung Yang
• Venue: Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGGRAPH International Conference on Virtual-Reality Continuum and Its Applications in Industry
• Year: 2013

Most prior virtual crowds are simulated based on individualistic movement and behavior, but in recent years a few works have begun to offer approaches for human-like social group movement and plausible interactions between people in a group while moving or standing together. In our work, two novel approaches for social group movement are offered for a slot-based group agent: the basis of the first is an articulated object with hinges at the inner slots which allows for dynamic formation transitions, and the second approach which has no hinges uses interpolation to do the same. In the articulated object approach, we accommodate sub-groups of people in the group who are more strongly bonded (e.g. couple, parent and child, talkative friends) so that they can continue to socialize or hold hands so long as the surrounding environment conditions permit it. In addition, we adapted a behavioral interaction framework to work between sub-groups of people in a group. We tested our approaches in a number of test-case scenarios and found that they work as desired. Furthermore, helped by many participants one-at-a-time, each conducted an immersive human-in-the-loop HMD evaluation of the dynamic group behaviors from a first-person view. Each participant, as one of the pedestrians in the crowd, belonged to his or her own virtual group and moved around and interacted with members of his or her group for group decision making. The statistical analysis of participant responses from the questionnaire validate the realism of the dynamic group behavior.