Title: Crowd Simulation on 3D Surfaces
Speaker: Brian Ricks, DIMACS
Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2013 11:00am - 12:00pm
Location: DIMACS Center, CoRE Bldg, Room 431, Rutgers University, Busch Campus, Piscataway, NJ
Abstract:
One of the miracles of nature is how groups of people and animals move with such elegance. Even though there is no one central controlling intelligence, crowds naturally create efficient and precise movements. Understanding how these emergent phenomena work and how to simulate them has been the seminal question of the growing research area of crowd simulation. As a fascinating interdisciplinary science, crowd simulation involves entomology, zoology, human psychology and sociology, computer science, and mathematics. Currently, crowd simulation research creates believable reproductions of natural crowd movements. However, one of the open questions in the field is how to simulate crowds constrained to 3D surfaces. Crowds constrained to 3D surfaces lack the mathematical simplicity of 2D surfaces. They also lack the freedom of unconstrained 3D movement, such as that seen in flocking birds. Starting with an introduction to crowds and crowd simulation, this talk works up these complex issues in 3D crowd simulation. It will end with my results in 3D crowd simulation and a look at exciting future opportunities in this area.