Exploring a Plugin-Based System for Crowd and Pathogen Simulation in Unity

Abstract

Simulating crowds and pathogens together can reveal information about disease spread. There are multiple ways of modeling both crowds and pathogens, and each of them use different strategies. This paper describes a simulation design intended to unify them via a plugin model. Each strategy can be written into a "plugin"of code. Then, these plugins can be used in crowd and pathogen objects to alter their behavior. In this project, the authors focused on crowd-side simulation, and they researched four crowd models. The authors categorized these models in two ways: driving or avoiding, and cognitive or continuum. Driving models move crowds from a start to a goal, and avoiding models were implemented as "plugins"in two forms: behaviors, which are agent-based (cognitive), and communals, which oversee an entire crowd (continuum). Putting different models in a single system with the plugin structure allows users to make crowd simulations in different scenarios with simple operations in a single interface, even though the algorithms themselves are quite different. The system could be even more useful in the future when the authors do pathogen research with it, which would allow the authors to analyze the pattern of how the pandemic infects people, and come up with a solution for people to stay safe in a crowd.