Simulation Level of Detail for Multiagent Control

David Brogan
University of Virginia

Jessica K. Hodgins
Carnegie Mellon University

International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 2002.

Abstract

Many classes of applications require multiagent navigation control algorithms to specify the movements and actions of heterogeneous groups containing thousands of charac- ters. The scale and complexity of these interacting character groups require navigation control algorithms that are both generalizable and specifically tuned to particular character platforms. We propose a technique called simulation level of detail (LOD) that provides a simulation-based interface between navigation control algorithms and the specific mo- bile characters on which they operate. A simulation LOD efficiently models a character's ability to move given its dy- namic state and provides this simplified version of the char- acter to navigation controllers for use in run-time search algorithms that compute locomotion actions. We develop our simulation LOD algorithms on groups of physically sim- ulated human and alien bicyclists and demonstrate reusable controllers that provide improvements in path following and herding tasks.

Paper

 

David Brogan