UCLA

In the context of realistic autonomous human animation, we introduce a novel framework for simulating a variety of nontrivial, socially motivated behaviors that underlie the orderly passage of pedestrians through doorways, especially the common courtesy of opening and/or holding doors open for others, an important etiquette that has been overlooked in the graphics literature to date. Creating self-animating virtual humans that can emulate this common social activity requires serious attention to the interplay of visual perception, navigation in constrained doorway environments, manipulation of a variety of door types, and high-level decision making based on social considerations.

To address this complex human simulation problem, we take an artificial life approach to modeling autonomous pedestrians, proposing a layered architecture comprising mental, behavioral, and motor layers. The behavioral layer is a coupled composite of two stages: (1) a decentralized, agent-based strategy for dynamically determining the well-mannered ordering of pedestrians around doorways, and (2) a state-based model that directs and coordinates a pedestrian's interactions with the door and synthesizes various door holding actions with the support of a flexible procedural motion model at the motor layer. The mental layer comprises a Bayesian network decision model that selects appropriate door holding behaviors by considering both internal and external social factors pertinent to pedestrians interacting with one another in and around doorways.

Our framework addresses the various door types in common use and supports a variety of doorway etiquette scenarios with efficient, real-time performance.