Application of a general particle system model to movement of pedestrians and vehicles

Abstract

This paper discusses the development of a series of models that ultimately leads to an unusual simulation approach to modeling automated guided vehicles on a factory floor. A pedestrian model was initially created from ideas taken from some models of traffic and computer animation. The first stage of this model was a cellular automata model of pedestrians crossing a street. After a model of "beasts" was located on the internet, some modifications were made to the beast model to take advantage of the object-oriented features of the beast model to model the pedestrian scenario. Not only could the pedestrian model be integrated into a traffic simulation, but it could be extended to model robots on a factory floor. The algorithms developed for this research are an example of systems modeling in which a set of rules can be applied to a variety of systems by making simple modifications.