Collective Crowd Formation Transform with Mutual Information-Based Runtime Feedback

This paper introduces a new crowd formation transform approach to achieve visually pleasing group formation transition and control. Its core idea is to transform crowd formation shapes with a least-effort pair assignment using the Kuhn-Munkres algorithm, discover clusters of agent sub-groups using affinity propagation and Delaunay triangulation algorithms, and apply subgroup-based SFM (social force model) to the agent subgroups to achieve alignment, cohesion and collision avoidance. Meanwhile, mutual information of the dynamic crowd is used to guide agents’ movement at runtime. This approach combines both macroscopic (involving least-effort position assignment and clustering) and microscopic (involving SFM) controls of the crowd transformation to maximally maintain subgroups’ local stability and dynamic collective behavior, while minimizing the overall effort (i.e., traveling distance) of the agents during the transformation. Through simulation experiments and comparisons, we demonstrate that this approach is efficient and effective to generate visually pleasing and smooth transformations and outperform several existing crowd simulation approaches including RVO, ORCA and OpenSteer.