A new autonomous agent approach for the simulation of pedestrians in urban environments

In this paper, a new approach to autonomous agent navigation in real-time applications is presented. Effective driving simulators demand a realistic simulation of both the driven vehicle and the surrounding environment. For example, a variety of pedestrians and autonomous vehicles improve the realism of the simulation. Many studies of virtual environments for autonomous navigation are based on complex spatial subdivisions. Our approach takes advantage of the topological structure of cities, where pedestrians usually walk along straight pavements, to develop a new method for the simulation of autonomous pedestrians. The "smart obstacle" concept is introduced and a method for realistic corner turning is also explained. Our approach has been applied to simulate the motion of pedestrians on train station platforms, the results of which are presented and discussed.