Rapport d'avancement de thèse - mars 1998
NOM / Prénom du
candidat au doctorat |
Soraia RAUPP MUSSE |
| Directeur de thèse |
Prof. Daniel THALMANN |
| Laboratoire |
Laboratoire d'Infographie |
| TITRE |
Simulation of Crowds Based on Group Behaviors |
1. Objectifs principaux du travail (env. 15 lignes)
The goal of this project aims at creating a model to simulate human crowd's
behaviour in general situations, e.g. simulation of a panic situation,
simulation of groups events, global behaviours, populate general virtual
environments, etc. The crowd in our work, is formed by groups of human
virtual agents. The individuals are simple while the autonomy and "intelligence"
are related to the groups. There are three kinds of groups in our crowd
model: guided groups (which can be guided by an external process); programmed
groups (that follow the programmed specifications using the script language)
and the reactive/autonomous crowd (that follow the events/reaction theory
implemented through a rule-based system, also defined in the script language).
The idea of this project is also provide different levels of autonomy of
crowd simulation in order to respect to different compromises with the
reality. So, if one application does not require intelligent reactions,
just pre-programmed actions could be applied. If another application requires
a big number of interactions, guided crowds can populate the environment.
In the same way, if the user is interested in have some emergent behaviours,
rules can be defined in order to determine events that could be matched
during the simulation and the possible associated events. This work is
part of two European Projects: the COVEN project, where we intend to integrate
a crowd motor in DIVE System and eRENA Project, where we have several integrations
to do which aims at generating platforms to interaction with virtual humans,
in our case virtual crowds.
2. Résultats obtenus durant l'année 1998 (env. 40 lignes)
2.1 Development
i) A first version of CrowdSystem was developed. A textual part was developed
in Java Language and a graphical part in Inventor. These two interfaces
mixed, contribute to generate a script language in order to specify information
to groups behaviors.
ii) The theory of events and reaction was totally studied and implemented.
Following two images showing the dialog between a leader and the crowd
using events and reactions. On left, the leader talks generating an event,
and on right the crowd reacts.
iii) Some specialized behaviours and individuals skills were generated
for some individuals of crowd (just leaders of crowd - one per group, except
if one group splits in two or more groups depending on the number of existent
leaders) like emotion, memory, decision ability, etc.
iv) All the action distribution (including also SmObj [See Kallmann's
report]) was developed for the mobile or fix crowd. Following two images
to show the mobile and fix crowds. On left, the crowd in a political demonstration,
and on center and right the crowd in a theatre. In this case, we generate
behavioural rules that were applied depending on some parameters specified
by the user. For example, in the political demonstration the agents that
are not participating of the manifestation can react negativelly or positivelly
depending on their group status. That means, some group can agree with
the political demonstration and eventually join to them, or they can also
do not agree with them and no mind about it, or just continue to observe
it.
v) We have also tested a lot of different applications in order to prove
the general aspects of our model. In the context of emergent behaviours,
a simulation was developed considering the following scenario: virtual
groups are in a party and they have two possible emotional status: HUNGRY
and SOCIAL, respectivelly representing two different goals: go to find
something to eat and meet and talk with others. We have created behavioural
rules in order to model changes in the emotional status depending on if
the agents eat or not, or if they meet someone that they dont like. The
following figure shows an image of this simulation.
vi) Some animations could be visualized in http://ligwww.epfl.ch/soraia.html.
The important detail in these animations is that just groups behaviors
(action, motion and reactions) are specified, that is, we do not need to
inform individual behaviours. The system generate it in an automatic way.
Also, autonomous behaviours can emerge as a function of behavioural rules
described in the theory of events and reactions.
vii) We have also worked with students (semester and diplome) to study
and implement different methods to generate groups motion through a single
trajectory, using force fields, 2D and 3D spatial distribution. In the
2D case, we have used plans and in the 3D case, we have used spheres. The
force fields were used to avoid collision with others and also to generate
specific behaviour implemented through attraction and repulsion forces,
e.g., hungry and fear. The following images show some images of simulation
with fishes and birds. Again, some animations could be shown in http://ligwww.epfl.ch/soraia.html.
2.2 Conferences attended
MMM'98 - Multimedia Modelling'98, October, 1998 - Lausanne, Switzerland.
VRST'98 - ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology. November,
1998 - Taipei, Taiwan.
CapTech98 - Conference on Capture Motion. November, 1998 -Geneve, Switzerland.
3. Planification de la suite des travaux (donner un calendrier approximatif)
March,April/99 - I'll work to put CROWDlib in the new version of AGENTlib++.
Some new features will be included in order to offer version 2.0 of CrowdLib.
From March to July/99 - I'll work in European Projects (COVEN and eRENA)
deliverables.
May/99 - I will start to write the thesis document.
From May to October - Other tests have to be made in order to use our model,
as well as some investigations in the subject of building evacuations.
From March to October/99 - Production others demos: sociological demo,
memory of group demo, decision ability of crowd, etc...
4. Nouvelles publications (non mentionnées dans le rapport précédent)
Farenc, N., Raupp MUSSE, S., Schweiss, E., Kallmann, M., Aune, O., Boulic,
R., Thalmann, D. "A Paradigm for Controlling Virtual
Humans in urban Environment Simulations". To appear in Applied Artificial
Intelligence Journal - Special Issue on Intelligent Virtual Environments.,
1999.
SCHWEISS, E.; MUSSE, S. R.; GARAT, F. and THALMANN, D. "An Architecture
to Guide Crowds Basedon Rule-Based Systems". To appear in Autonomous
Agents'99. Seattle, Washington, May 1-5, 1999.
Normand, V., Babski, C., Benford, S., Bullock, A., Carion, S., Chrysanthou,
Y., Farcet, N., Frécon, E., Harvey,J., Kuijpers, N., Magnenat-Thalmann,
N., Raupp MUSSE, S., Rodden, T., Slater, M., Smith, G., Steed, A., Thalmann,
D., Tromp, J., Usoh, M., Van Liempd, G., & Kladias, N. "The COVEN
project: exploring applicative, technical and usage dimensions of collaborative
virtual environments." To appear in PRESENCE Journal: Teleoperators
and Virtual Environment. (1999)
MUSSE, S. R.; BABSKI, C.; CAPIN, T. and THALMANN, D. "Crowd Modelling
in Collaborative Virtual Environments". VRST'98 November, 1998. Taiwan.
Farenc, N., Raupp MUSSE, S., Schweiss, E., Kallmann, M., Aune, O., Boulic,
R., Thalmann, D. "One Step towards Virtual human management for urban
Environment Simulation." ECAI'98. August, Brighton, England.
| Date:24.02.99 |
Signature du candidat:
Soraia
Raupp Musse
Signature du directeur de thèse: Daniel Thalmann |
Version 3.2.98 - Responsable: Geneviève Rime, administratrice, tél.
021/693.52.05, E-mail: genevieve.rime@di.epfl.ch