Situated Cellular Agents: A Model to Simulate Crowding Dynamics

This paper presents a Multi Agent Systems (MAS) approach to crowd modelling, based on the Situated Cellular Agents (SCA) model. This is a special class of Multilayered Multi Agent Situated System (MMASS), providing an explicit representation of spatial structures and different means of agent interaction. Heterogenous agents may be obtained through the definition of different agent types, specifying different behaviors and perceptive capabilities. The model is rooted on some basic principles of Cellular Automata (e.g. the definition of adjacency geometries), but also takes into account the autonomy of modelled entities, with their own internal architecture. A formal definition of the SCA model will be given, with a description of how it can be applied to forward and backward approaches to simulation. Particular attention will be paid to the crowd and pedestrian modelling, and two applications to simulation to crowding will be described.