Study of nine people in a hallway: Some simulation challenges

Many virtual environments rely on a social population that needs to behave in a plausible manner. Crowd simulations typically concern themselves with simulating collision free movement, while getting into and managing social contact with other humans is a less explored subject. Complex situations such as forming conversation groups and recognizing each other presence need to be tackled. This study presents a typical real-life scenario at a university, which in spite of its mundane nature uncovers a wide range of simulation challenges. We apply our reactive rule-based system that models territoriality, proxemics and social navigation to this scenario to demonstrate a possible approach to addressing some of these challenges and contribute to a vocabulary for social simulation.