Heter-Sim: Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems Simulation by Interactive Data-Driven Optimization

TraInterSim: Adaptive and Planning-Aware Hybrid-Driven Traffic Intersection Simulation

Traffic intersections are important scenes that can be seen almost everywhere in the traffic system. Currently, most simulation methods perform well at highways and urban traffic networks. In intersection scenarios, the challenge lies in the lack of clearly defined lanes, where agents with various motion plannings converge in the central area from different directions. Traditional model-based methods are difficult to drive agents to move realistically at intersections without enough predefined lanes, while data-driven methods often require a large amount of high-quality input data. Simultaneously, tedious parameter tuning is inevitable involved to obtain the desired simulation results. In this paper, we present a novel adaptive and planning-aware hybrid-driven method (TraInterSim) to simulate traffic intersection scenarios. Our hybrid-driven method combines an optimization-based data-driven scheme with a velocity continuity model. It guides the agent's movements using real-world data and can generate those behaviors not present in the input data. Our optimization method fully considers velocity continuity, desired speed, direction guidance, and planning-aware collision avoidance. Agents can perceive others' motion plannings and relative distances to avoid possible collisions. To preserve the individual flexibility of different agents, the parameters in our method are automatically adjusted during the simulation. TraInterSim can generate realistic behaviors of heterogeneous agents in different traffic intersection scenarios in interactive rates. Through extensive experiments as well as user studies, we validate the effectiveness and rationality of the proposed simulation method.

A Calibrated Force-Based Model for Mixed Traffic Simulation

Virtual traffic benefits a variety of applications, including video games, traffic engineering, autonomous driving, and virtual reality. To date, traffic visualization via different simulation models can reconstruct detailed traffic flows. However, each specific behavior of vehicles is always described by establishing an independent control model. Moreover, mutual interactions between vehicles and other road users are rarely modeled in existing simulators. An all-in-one simulator that considers the complex behaviors of all potential road users in a realistic urban environment is urgently needed. In this work, we propose a novel, extensible, and microscopic method to build heterogeneous traffic simulation using the force-based concept. This force-based approach can accurately replicate the sophisticated behaviors of various road users and their interactions in a simple and unified manner. We calibrate the model parameters using real-world traffic trajectory data. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated through many simulation experiments, as well as comparisons to real-world traffic data and popular microscopic simulators for traffic animation.

A history of crowd simulation: the past, evolution, and new perspectives

This paper aims to discuss the past, evolution, and new perspectives in crowd simulation. Many work have been produced and published in this area that was launched approximately 30 years ago. In this paper, we re-visited the main aspects of the area, presenting the periods and evolution we had in the past. In addition, we also discuss the present and possible trends for the future.

On the Synergy between Virtual Reality and Multi-Agent Systems

Multi-agent systems integrate a great variety of artificial intelligence techniques from different fields, these systems have made it possible to create intelligent systems more efficiently. On the other hand, virtual reality applications are accepted as viable techniques in different areas such as visualization, simulation, design, and research. The combined use of these two technologies has led to the development of realistic and interactive applications. This work aims to do a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) relying on the guidelines of Kitchenham and Petersen to analyze the state of the art of VR applications using multi-agent systems. Inclusion and exclusion criteria have been applied to identify relevant papers, 82 articles were selected and categorized according to the publication type, the research type, the asset type, and the purpose of the work. A complete review of the 82 selected articles was performed, based on the research questions that were established. This review made it possible to clarify the open lines of research that exist and to know where research in this field can be directed.

Application of Crowd Simulations in the Evaluation of Tracking Algorithms

Tracking and action-recognition algorithms are currently widely used in video surveillance, monitoring urban activities and in many other areas. Their development highly relies on benchmarking scenarios, which enable reliable evaluations/improvements of their efficiencies. Presently, benchmarking methods for tracking and action-recognition algorithms rely on manual annotation of video databases, prone to human errors, limited in size and time-consuming. Here, using gained experiences, an alternative benchmarking solution is presented, which employs methods and tools obtained from the computer-game domain to create simulated video data with automatic annotations. Presented approach highly outperforms existing solutions in the size of the data and variety of annotations possible to create. With proposed system, a potential user can generate a sequence of random images involving different times of day, weather conditions, and scenes for use in tracking evaluation. In the design of the proposed tool, the concept of crowd simulation is used and developed. The system is validated by comparisons to existing methods.

AADS: Augmented autonomous driving simulation using data-driven algorithms

Simulation systems have become essential to the development and validation of autonomous driving (AD) technologies. The prevailing state-of-the-art approach for simulation uses game engines or high-fidelity computer graphics (CG) models to create driving scenarios. However, creating CG models and vehicle movements (the assets for simulation) remain manual tasks that can be costly and time consuming. In addition, CG images still lack the richness and authenticity of real-world images, and using CG images for training leads to degraded performance. Here, we present our augmented autonomous driving simulation (AADS). Our formulation augmented real-world pictures with a simulated traffic flow to create photorealistic simulation images and renderings. More specifically, we used LiDAR and cameras to scan street scenes. From the acquired trajectory data, we generated plausible traffic flows for cars and pedestrians and composed them into the background. The composite images could be resynthesized with different viewpoints and sensor models (camera or LiDAR). The resulting images are photorealistic, fully annotated, and ready for training and testing of AD systems from perception to planning. We explain our system design and validate our algorithms with a number of AD tasks from detection to segmentation and predictions. Compared with traditional approaches, our method offers scalability and realism. Scalability is particularly important for AD simulations, and we believe that real-world complexity and diversity cannot be realistically captured in a virtual environment. Our augmented approach combines the flexibility of a virtual environment (e.g., vehicle movements) with the richness of the real world to allow effective simulation.