A scene which visualises social distancing on campus has been created by the V-SENSE Research Group based in Trinity’s School of Computer Science and Statistics.

The scene has been created using a crowd simulation system developed by V-SENSE, with the work completed as part of an EU H2020 creative technologies project called SAUCE ‘Smart Assets for re-Use in Creative Environments’.

In the scene, stationary crowd members loiter in groups (representing irresponsible citizens violating COVID-19 restrictions) while autonomous agents use AI to plan a path to their destinations, dynamically avoiding the groups of loiterers with a configurable “social distance” parameter.

A first-person walk-through of how a student can safely negotiate the crowd to reach the library is shown. The simulation promotes awareness of safety measures for COVID-19 spread while demonstating some key technologies used.