Interaction Fields: Intuitive Sketch-based Steering Behaviors for Crowd Simulation

1 RAINBOW - Sensor-based and interactive robotics
Inria Rennes – Bretagne Atlantique , IRISA-D5 - RÉALITÉ VIRTUELLE, HUMAINS VIRTUELS, INTERACTIONS ET ROBOTIQUE
3 MIMETIC - Analysis-Synthesis Approach for Virtual Human Simulation
UR2 - Université de Rennes 2, Inria Rennes – Bretagne Atlantique , IRISA-D5 - RÉALITÉ VIRTUELLE, HUMAINS VIRTUELS, INTERACTIONS ET ROBOTIQUE
Abstract : The real-time simulation of human crowds has many applications. In a typical crowd simulation, each person (agent') in the crowd moves towards a goal while adhering to local constraints. Many algorithms exist for specific local steering' tasks such as collision avoidance or group behavior. owever, these do not easily extend to completely new types of behavior, such as circling around another agent or hiding behind an obstacle. They also tend to focus purely on an agent's velocity without explicitly controlling its orientation. This paper presents a novel sketch-based method for modelling and simulating many steering behaviors for agents in a crowd. Central to this is the concept of an \emph{interaction field} (IF): a vector field that describes the velocities or orientations that agents should use around a given `source' agent or obstacle. An IF can also change dynamically according to parameters, such as the walking speed of the source agent. IFs can be easily combined with other aspects of crowd simulation, such as collision avoidance. Using an implementation of IFs in a real-time crowd simulation framework, we demonstrate the capabilities of IFs in various scenarios. This includes game-like scenarios where the crowd responds to a user-controlled avatar. We also present an interactive tool that computes an IF based on input sketches. This IF editor lets users intuitively and quickly design new types of behavior, without the need for programming extra behavioral rules. We thoroughly evaluate the efficacy of the IF editor through a user study, which demonstrates that our method enables non-expert users to easily enrich any agent-based crowd simulation with new agent interactions.
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Journal articles
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https://hal.inria.fr/hal-03642462
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Submitted on : Friday, April 15, 2022 - 10:03:10 AM
Last modification on : Friday, August 5, 2022 - 2:54:52 PM

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Adèle Colas, Wouter van Toll, Katja Zibrek, Ludovic Hoyet, Anne-Hélène Olivier, et al.. Interaction Fields: Intuitive Sketch-based Steering Behaviors for Crowd Simulation. Computer Graphics Forum, Wiley, In press, pp.1-14. ⟨10.1111/cgf.14491⟩. ⟨hal-03642462⟩

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