Events

Qualifying Exam Towards Realistic Environment Representation for Human Simulation
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Speaker: Matthew Schwartz

Bio

Location : Remote Via Zoom

Committee: 

Associate Professor Mubbasir Kapadia

Professor Vladimir Pavlovic

Professor Jie Gao

Associate Professor Sudarsun Kannan

Event Type: Qualifying Exam

Abstract: Realistic human simulation in virtual environments is foundational for games, training, and design evaluation, yet current navigation pipelines often trade off plausibility, speed, and scalability. We introduce a unified environment representation that targets the mid-level of route choice: a novel method that first constructs an embedded navigation graph to capture accessibility-aware topology and geometric cues, then leverages this graph to synthesize a navigable surface mesh for robust locomotion. Building on this representation, we propose a flexible route-choice framework that composes factors such as topology-driven accessibility and energy cost (e.g., slope) with visibility analysis, and supports continuous blending between competing objectives (e.g., maximizing distance versus maximizing view). Finally, to support dense crowds, we present a GPU-oriented approach that decouples utilization from environment scale, addressing performance bottlenecks common in resolution- or scene-size-dependent methods. Together, these contributions enable more realistic, controllable, and scalable human navigation in complex virtual environments.  

Organization: 

Contact  Associate Professor Mubbasir Kapadia

Zoom Link: https://rutgers.zoom.us/j/93641178796?pwd=kSCt1Neeau5Mwd121ZqRpSNIDXsvQF.1 Passcode: 984299