Biomechanical Locomotion Heterogeneity in Synthetic Crowds

Synthetic crowd simulation combines rule sets at different conceptual layers to represent the dynamic nature of crowds while adhering to basic principles of human steering, such as collision avoidance and goal completion. In this dissertation, I explore synthetic crowd simulation at the steering layer using a critical approach to define the central theme of the work, the impact of model representation and agent diversity in crowds. At the steering layer, simulated agents make regular decisions, or actions, related to steering which are often responsible for the emergent behaviours found in the macro-scale crowd. Because of this bottom-up impact of a steering model's defining rule-set, I postulate that biomechanics and diverse biomechanics may alter the outcomes of dynamic synthetic-crowds-based outcomes. This would mean that an assumption of normativity and/or homogeneity among simulated agents and their mobility would provide an inaccurate representation of a scenario. If these results are then used to make real world decisions, say via policy or design, then those populations not represented in the simulated scenario may experience a lack of representation in the actualization of those decisions.

A focused literature review shows that applications of both biomechanics and diverse locomotion representation at this layer of modelling are very narrow and often not present. I respond to the narrowness of this representation by addressing both biomechanics and heterogeneity separately. To address the question of performance and importance of locomotion biomechanics in crowd simulation, I use a large scale comparative approach. The industry standard synthetic crowd models are tested under a battery of benchmarks derived from prior work in comparative analysis of synthetic crowds as well as new scenarios derived from built environments. To address the question of the importance of heterogeneity in locomotion biomechanics, I define tiers of impact in the multi-agent crowds model at the steering layer--from the action space, to the agent space, to the crowds space. To this end, additional models and layers are developed to address the modelling and application of heterogeneous locomotion biomechanics in synthetic crowds. The results of both studies form a research arc which shows that the biomechanics in steering models provides important fidelity in several applications and that heterogeneity in the model of locomotion biomechanics directly impacts both qualitative and quantitative synthetic crowds outcomes. As well, systems, approaches, and pitfalls regarding the analysis of steering model and human mobility diversity are described.