Mass Game Simulator: An Entertainment Application of Multiagent Control

Abstract

This paper proposes and develops a simulator of multiagent mass games in which agents achieve formations displaying given grayscale images via distributed control. One potential application of mass games is entertainment for ordinary users. However, it is difficult for nonexpert users to understand the existing control methods for mass games, and the implementation requires considerable time and effort. The proposed mass game simulator developed to overcome these difficulties is provided as a MATLAB application. With this simulator, we can import a reference image, simulate a mass game for the reference image, confirm the simulation result, and save the result through simple mouse and keyboard inputs without the need for expert knowledge or programming effort. In addition, the application of the proposed simulator to entertainment and digital signage is discussed and evaluated. In particular, in the latter application, by playing an animation of the simulation results obtained using the simulator on digital signage, we can construct a novel type of signage whose contents are shown by the motion of individual dots corresponding to agents. These results indicate that control of multiagent systems can be used for nonengineering applications, which have not been considered in most existing studies.