GPGPU Computing for Microscopic Simulations of Crowd Dynamics

keywords: Crowd simulation, social force, social distances, cellular automata, using GPU in simulation
We compare GPGPU implementations of two popular models of crowd dynamics. Specifically, we consider a continuous social force model, based on differential equations (molecular dynamics) and a discrete social distances model based on non-homogeneous cellular automata. For comparative purposes both models have been implemented in two versions: on the one hand using GPGPU technology, on the other hand using CPU only. We compare some significant characteristics of each model, for example: performance, memory consumption and issues of visualization. We also propose and test some possibilities for tuning the proposed algorithms for efficient GPU computations.
reference: Vol. 34, 2015, No. 6, pp. 1418–1434