Simulating gait and structural effects of aging for improved diversity in virtual crowds

Chathika Gunaratne, Prasad Wimalaratne

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

In real human crowds, diversification is caused by many factors such as gender, age, skin color, clothing, walking style, psychology etc., yet most crowd simulation systems rely only on appearance related variables for diversification. This research explores improving crowd diversity by simulating the biomechanical effects of aging in humans within crowd characters. Simulated characters were reprogrammed to be able to predict their behavior through an aging parameter predictor using support vector regression respective to their age. Data from gerontology studies recording spinal curvature and walking pattern deterioration with age were used for training. A spatial diversity algorithm was designed and implemented to distribute the resulting variants evenly among each other. Evaluations were conducted to gauge the impact on the diversification of the crowd simulation. The results prove that simulating posture and walking pattern deterioration in older characters does significantly improve biomechanical diversity within a virtual human crowd.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 10th International Conference Computer Graphics, Imaging, and Visualization, CGIV 2013
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Pages17-22
Number of pages6
ISBN (Print)9780769550510
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013
Externally publishedYes
Event10th International Conference Computer Graphics, Imaging, and Visualization, CGIV 2013 - Macau, China
Duration: Aug 6 2013Aug 8 2013

Publication series

NameProceedings - 10th International Conference Computer Graphics, Imaging, and Visualization, CGIV 2013

Conference

Conference10th International Conference Computer Graphics, Imaging, and Visualization, CGIV 2013
Country/TerritoryChina
CityMacau
Period08/6/1308/8/13

Keywords

  • Aging
  • Crowd simulation
  • Simulation
  • Virtual characters

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