A framework for simulating agent-based cooperative tasks in crowd simulation

This paper presents a novel agent-based approach to simulate cooperative tasks in crowd simulation. Our framework consists of two kinds of agents: pedestrians and workers. A cooperative task requires two or more workers to simultaneously perform actions on objects. The workers should cooperate with each other to finish tasks. This framework considers several basic cooperative behaviors including pushing obstacles away from blocked exits, lifting cargos and carrying them to a destination, and pulling objects using ropes. A complex task can be decomposed into several simple tasks and the simple tasks are finished either in a sequential or parallel order. Our framework also simulates crowd behaviors such as workers joining and leaving cooperative tasks, moving objects around obstacles, collision avoidance for agents, and way giving. We demonstrate examples for simulating different cooperative behaviors. Our framework can be applied to movies, crowd evacuation, narrative systems, task planning simulation, and games.