On the development of an MAS based evacuation simulation system: Autonomous navigation and collision avoidance

Abstract

This paper presents implementation, verification and validation of autonomous navigation and collision avoidance algorithms in a multi agent based evacuation simulation code. The code is being developed with the aim of evaluating the effectiveness of different means to make time critical evacuation process, in large complex urban areas, fast and smooth. Implementation and verification of an autonomous navigation algorithm, which enable both the agents with and without a pre-defined path to reach far visible high grounds, are presented. The Optimal reciprocal collision avoidance scheme, by Berg et al. [1], is adopted for the collision avoidance. The collision avoidance implementation is validated by comparing the numerical results with field observations reported in literature. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.