Abstract
This paper proposes and develops a simulator of multiagent mass games in which agents achieve formations displaying given grayscale images via distributed control. One potential application of mass games is entertainment for ordinary users. However, it is difficult for nonexpert users to understand the existing control methods for mass games, and the implementation requires considerable time and effort. The proposed mass game simulator developed to overcome these difficulties is provided as a MATLAB application. With this simulator, we can import a reference image, simulate a mass game for the reference image, confirm the simulation result, and save the result through simple mouse and keyboard inputs without the need for expert knowledge or programming effort. In addition, the application of the proposed simulator to entertainment and digital signage is discussed and evaluated. In particular, in the latter application, by playing an animation of the simulation results obtained using the simulator on digital signage, we can construct a novel type of signage whose contents are shown by the motion of individual dots corresponding to agents. These results indicate that control of multiagent systems can be used for nonengineering applications, which have not been considered in most existing studies.
Highlights
By applying an animation of the simulation results obtained using the mass game simulator (MGS) to digital signage, we can construct a novel type of signage whose contents are shown by the motion of individual dots corresponding to agents
(iii) In the digital signage application, we evaluate the quality of the contents displayed in the signage via comparison with an existing method [28] for the formation control of multiagent systems
DEVELOPMENT OF MGS To overcome these issues, we developed the MGS that allows the simulation of mass games without the need for expert knowledge or programming effort
Summary
In addition to this basic functionality, we introduce a zoom function to confirm the detailed behavior of agents and a save function to save the simulation results as image and movie files The former aids users in understanding the idea underlying the mass game controllers, and the latter broadens the application range of the MGS, as demonstrated later in this paper. The control methods proposed in these works are not applicable to the mass game problem because these works focused primarily on simple formations specified by lines, e.g., circles, polygons, and V-shapes, and did not consider formations displaying grayscale images.
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