Modeling Gap Seeking Behaviors for Agent-based Crowd Simulation

Research on agent-based crowd simulation has gained tremendous momentum in recent years due to the increase of computing power. One key issue in this research area is to develop various behavioral models to capture the microscopic behaviors of individuals (i.e., agents) in a crowd. In this paper, we propose a novel behavior model for modeling the gap seeking behavior which can be frequently observed in real world scenarios where an individual in a crowd proactively seek for gaps in the crowd flow so as to minimize potential collision with other people. We propose a two-level modeling framework and introduce a gap seeking behavior model as a proactive conflict minimization maneuver at global navigation level. The model is integrated with the reactive collision avoidance model at local steering level. We evaluate our model by simulating a real world scenario. The results show that our model can generate more realistic crowd behaviors compared to the classical social-force model in the given scenario.