Identification of Lifelike Characteristics of Human Crowds Through a Classification Task

Webster, Jamie and Amos, Martyn (2021) Identification of Lifelike Characteristics of Human Crowds Through a Classification Task. In: ALIFE 2021: The Conference on Artificial Life. MIT Press, Cambridge, US, pp. 1-10.

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00360

Abstract

Crowd simulations are used extensively to study the dynamics of human collectives. Such studies are underpinned by specific movement models, which encode rules and assumptions about how people navigate a space and handle interactions with others. These models often give rise to macroscopic simulated crowd behaviours that are statistically valid, but which lack the noisy microscopic behaviours that are the signature of believable “real” crowds. In this paper, we use an existing “Turing test” for crowds to identify “lifelike” features of real crowds that are generally omitted from simulation models. Our previous study using this test established that untrained individuals have difficulty in classifying movies of crowds as “Real” or “Simulated”, and that such people often have an idealised view of how crowds move. In this follow-up study (with new participants) we perform a second trial, which now includes a training phase (showing participants movies of real crowds). We find that classification performance significantly improves after training, confirming the existence of features that allow participants to identify real crowds. High-performing individuals are able to identify the features of real crowds that should be incorporated into future simulations if they are to be considered “lifelike”

Item Type: Book Section
Additional Information: JW was supported by a Ph.D. studentship from the Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University. We thank Gerta Koster and her research team for useful discussions, and all of the trial participants for their contributions.
Subjects: G400 Computer Science
G600 Software Engineering
Department: Faculties > Engineering and Environment > Computer and Information Sciences
Related URLs:
Depositing User: John Coen
Date Deposited: 07 May 2021 12:19
Last Modified: 07 Oct 2021 14:00
URI: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/46115

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