IAS Seminar: Velocity-based models for microscopic crowd simulation

A microscopic crowd simulation is based on a model of interaction between agents, which describes how they influence each other’s motion. The simulation then combines these interactions, and results into a whole crowd motion. The emergence of specific traffic conditions and patterns from simulation is expected at the macroscopic scale, as it would occur in similar real conditions.

For a long time, interaction models have formulated atomic interactions between agents as functions of distance between them: the closer the agents the stronger their influence and the resulting maneuvers. Actually, real humans react more to the ”future“ conditions of distance with others than to the current ones: they predict these conditions based on current motion (velocities) and anticipate their reaction. This is what several ”velocity-based models“ attempt to reproduce in simulation. In this talk, we will present the foundations of velocity-based models and present several solutions and models that our team developed in the context of crowd simulation.

Anyone interested is cordially invited to participate in this seminar.