Research Interests

During the past few years I have been carrying out research in the area of computer graphics modeling and animation techniques for real-time simulation of virtual humans. Currently I am interested in crowds simulation and coordinated multi-agent simulation for real-time interactive virtual environments.

The area of Multi Agents Systems (MAS) is a subfield of Artificial intelligence (AI) that aims to provide mechanisms for coordination of independent agents’ behavior. MAS requires agents to act efficiently both autonomously and as a part of a team of autonomous agents acting in real time collaborative environments in which there are also real humans.

A team in a MAS will be composed of a group of agents sharing a common long-term goal. Agents within a team should be able to coordinate their behaviors by adapting compatible cognitive processes and by directly affecting each other’s perceptory inputs including via communicative actions. In order to obtain cognitive coordination I am interested in investigating different techniques for communication that may include verbal but also non-verbal communication such as body gestures or facial expressions.

PhD Abstract. Dissertation entitled “Modeling Realistic Autonomous Agent Crowd Movement: Social Forces, Communication, Roles and Psychological Influences”.

Publications

N. Pelechano, J. Allbeck and N. Badler. Controlling Individual Agents in High-Density Crowd Simulation.
ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA) 2007 August 3-4, San Diego.
video (51MB. divX)

N. Pelechano, N. Badler. Modeling Crowd and Trained Leader Behavior during Building Evacuation.
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 80-86, Nov/Dec, 2006.
Abstract

McDonald, D., Lazarus, R., Leung, A., Hussain, T., Bharathy, G., Eidelson, R.J. Pelechano, N., Sandhaus, E. Silverman, B.G. Interoperable human behavior models for simulations.
Proceedings of the 2006 Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (BRIMS) Conference (May 15-18, Baltimore, MD) 2006.

N. Pelechano, K. O'Brien, B. Silverman, N. Badler. Crowd Simulation Incorporating Agent Psychological Models, Roles and Communication.
First International Workshop on Crowd Simulation. (V-CROWDS '05) Lausanne (Switzerland) 24-25 November 2005.

P. Morillo, M. Fernandez, N. Pelechano: A Grid Representation for Distributed Virtual Environments.
2003 Annual Crossgrid Project Workshop & 1st European Across Grids Conference, February, 13th-14th, 2003.
Grid Computing, Lecture Note in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag Berlin, volume 2970/2004, pp. 182-189. 2004.
(Abstract)
(Extended Abstract)

Thesis and Technical Reports:

N. Pelechano, Modeling Realistic Autonomous Agent Crowd Movement: Social Forces, Communication, Roles and Psychological Influences”.
(PhD dissertation, Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania. June 2006)
PhD Abstract.

N. Pelechano, L. Bull, M. Slater. Fast Collision Detection Between Cloth and a Deformable Human Body.
(technical report, University College London, 2003)

N. Pelechano: Real-Time Collision Detection Between Cloth and Skinned Avatars using OBB. 2002 (PDF)
Master Thesis at University College London (UCL) for my MSc VIVE (Vision, Imaging and Virtual Environments)

N. Pelechano:Study and development of a 3D deformation simulation system of flexible figures oriented to be used in characters interactive visualization. 2001 (PDF) (Spanish)
Thesis for my last year of Ingenieria Informatica (Computer Science) at Universitat de Valencia

Conferences

Speaker:

"Evacuation Simulation. Research Models and Commercials Tools"
Simulation + Building Workshop
T.C. Chan Center for Building Simulation & Energy Studies.
School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia (USA) 10 November 2006.

"Improving the Realism of Agent Movement for High Density Crowd Simulation"
poster - extended abstract
The ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA'06)
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna (Austria) 2-4 September 2006.

"Crowd Simulation Incorporating Agent Psychological Models, Roles and Communication"
First International Workshop on Crowd Simulation (V-CROWDS '05)
EPFL, Lausanne (Switzerland) 24-25 November 2005.

"Human-Avatar Interacion in Virtual Environments"
Digital Media in Communication
Sponsored by The Annenberg Public Policy Center
University of Pennsylvania, 31 October - 1 November 2003

Attended:

SIGGRAPH 2005
Los Angeles Convention Center, 31 July-4 August 2005

ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation 2005
Los Angeles, 29-31 July, 2005

Computer Animation and Social Agents Conference (CASA2004)
University of Geneva, Switzerland, 7-9 July 2004

Game Developers Conference (GDC04)
San Jose, California. 22-26 March 2004

A Symposium on Intelligent Motion and Interaction Within Virtual Environments
University College London (UCL), London, UK 15-17 September 2003
Sponsored by NASA Ames, UCL and RIACS
Co-Chaired by Stephen R. Ellis (NASA Ames) and Mel Slater (UCL)

Teaching

I have been the Teaching Assistant for Computer Graphics (CSE 460/CIS 560) during Fall 2004, 2005 and 2006.

Blackboard

Past Projects

The following list contains the main projects in which I have been collaborating:

Bystander: Simulation of a virtual scenario where we can study how real people behave when they confront a violent situation. For this project I developed a method to study the relation between human postures and emotions. This project is being developed by the Computer Science Department at the University College London (UCL) (2002-2003)

Prometheus – Cloth Simulator: This project is part of the Prometheus project, a real-time 3D studio broadcast plataform. The Cloth Simulator is being developed by the UCL VR group.

Finestrat: For this project an avatar that can be handle by a real actor has been developed. This avatar includes semiautonomous behavior and flexible deformation modelling based on FFD. Finestrat is part of the ARTIST project, an animation package for real-time interactive simulation. This project has been carried out by the ARTEC group at Institut de Robotica, Universitat de Valencia.

Contact

   
  Email:      npelecha(AT)seas(DOT)upenn(DOT)edu  

 Center for Human Modelling and simulation

Updated October 2006 by Nuria Pelechano