[March 28th] Seminar talk by Ms. Jan Allbeck (University of Pennsylvania)

• Speaker: Dr. Jan Allbeck
• Location: CH 430
• Date: Friday, March 28
• Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Seminar Abstract

As we journey through our day, our lives intersect with other people. We see
people leaving for work, waiting for trains, meeting with friends, hard at
work, and thousands of other activities that we may not even be conscious
of. People create a rich tapestry of activity throughout our day, a /human
texture/. We may not always be aware of this texture, but we would
definitely notice if it were missing, and it is missing from many
simulations.

Creating virtual scenarios that simulate a substantial human population with
typical and varied behaviors can be an overwhelming task. In addition to
modeling the environment and characters, tagging the environment with
semantic data, and creating motions for the characters, the simulation
engineer also needs to create character profiles for a heterogeneous
population and link these character traits to appropriate behaviors to be
performed at appropriate times and in appropriate places during the
simulation. Due to the large number of individuals, the variety of behaviors
they may engage in, and the potential complexity of environments, this is
currently beyond the scope of military, crowd research, or entertainment
simulations. At present, simulations either have a very limited number of
character profiles or are meticulously hand scripted. I will describe a
framework, called CAROSA (Crowds with Aleatoric, Reactive, Opportunistic,
and Scheduled Actions), that will facilitate the creation of heterogeneous
populations for large scale simulations by using a commercial off-the-shelf
software package (Microsoft Outlook®), a Parameterized Action Representation
(PAR), and multiple human agent simulation software (HiDAC). CAROSA
incorporates four different broad action types: scheduled, reactive,
opportunistic, and aleatoric. Scheduled activities arise from specified
roles for individuals or groups; reactive actions are triggered by
contextual events or environmental constraints; opportunistic actions arise
from explicit goals and priorities; aleatoric actions are random but
structured by choices, distributions, or parametric variations. The CAROSA
architecture enables the specification and control of actions for more
realistic large scale ~Shuman textures~T in virtual worlds such as buildings
and cities, links human characteristics and high level behaviors to animated
graphical depictions, and relieves some of the burden in creating and
animating heterogeneous 3D animated human populations.

Speaker Biography

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer and Information
Science, which is a part of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at
the University of Pennsylvania. My advisor is Dr. Norman I. Badler. I am
also Associate Director of the Center for Human Modeling and Simulation
(HMS), where I coordinate and participate in the research projects
affiliated with HMS as well as coordinating the operational aspects of the
lab facility. I have Bachelors degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science
from Bloomsburg University and a Masters degree in Computer and Information
Science from Penn. I have had the great opportunity to explore many aspects
of computer graphics, but am most drawn to research at the crossroads of
animation, artificial intelligence, and psychology in the simulation of
virtual humans. My current research focuses on the creation and simulation
of heterogeneous, functional crowds.