XPost: comp.ai.games, comp.ai.alife   
   From: juhan@logicognosis.com   
      
   On Wed, 04 Aug 2004 04:13:27 +0000, Jonathan Dinerstein wrote:   
   > It seems to me that one of the strengths of virtual crowds is that,   
   > through emergent behavior, rich simulations can result from simple   
   > agent AI.  However, I've had some troubles achieving specific crowd   
   > behavior due to the emergent behavior.  However, it's a pain to lay   
   > out in detail everything that the crowd is supposed to do (and   
   > arguably breaks the underlying concept anyway).   
      
   Wasn't there some software that modeled the behaviour of a flock of birds?   
   I think it ran on *nix? You might investigate that. I would guess that (at   
   least at superficial levels) flocks of birds, schools of fish, crowds, all   
   move with similar dynamics. If you're trying to model more complex   
   behaviour, like what makes a crowd "get ugly" and start to riot, then I   
   imagine that would be a lot more complex. Not in the behavioural sciences,   
   I don't know if anyone has done any simulations or models like that.   
      
   Personally, I'm sceptical of hoping for "interesting emergent behaviour"   
   to come out of parallelism or randomness of agents. Sounds to me too much   
   like "and then a miracle occurs". If your behavioural models are complex   
   enough, then maybe, but then you've already solved the problem? I wouldn't   
   expect any magic "free lunch" serendipity. You might be lucky though.   
      
   > Are there any techniques for using an "overseer" agent to indirectly   
   > control a crowd and thereby force the achievement of certain types of   
   > crowd behavior?  For example, an agent that will dynamically assign   
   > motion goals to the crowd such that it will navigate intelligently   
   > with respect to a dynamic environment.  Are there any published papers   
   > on such boss agents?   
      
   But then it would not be a crowd, would it? It would be an army? I suppose   
   there are instances in crowds where "instigators" do take control and   
   start directing the mob (what causes transition?). Is this what you mean?   
      
   > Thanks in advance for any info =).   
   >   
      
   --   
   Juhan Leemet   
   Logicognosis, Inc.   
      
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