Simulation of Agent Movement with a Path Finding Feature Based on Modification of Physical Force Approach

Crowd modeling is the study of crowd behaviours and has been used by, for example, safety engineers and architectural designers in assessing crowd movements in buildings under normal and emergency situations. However, many existing crowd models neglect how agents in the crowd explore the environment to find the most suitable or optimal path towards their destinations. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to present an agent-based crowd modeling approach by combining the social force model and the magnetic model that include detailed features of each agent. The agent-based model will be integrated with a path finding algorithm, the Dijkstra Algorithm, for optimal path selection towards the target destinations. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach can perform plausible crowd movement in the simulated environment under normal situations. Key-Words: Agent based, physical force approach, path finding