Modeling of human behavior in crowds using a cognitive feedback approach

We present a real-time agent-based approach to modeling crowd behavior that is based on complementary psychological and engineering principles. The application focus is for developing realistic models that address not only the physical but also the psychological aspects of crowd behavior. Our approach to modeling the psychology of a crowd is based on the principle of emotional reflection. According to this principle, our emotions are evoked in response to our perception of other people’s emotions; hence emotions propagate through a crowd as a result of each person’s perception of other crowd member’s emotions as well as external factors. The emotional model is coupled with a movement model that is based on the social forces formulation, but with parameters modified to represent the current emotional state of each crowd member. We present the model along with results of how different emotional levels can affect the movement dynamics of crowds.