Modeling human intuitions about liquid flow with particle-based simulation.

ABSTRACT: Humans can easily describe, imagine, and, crucially, predict a wide variety of behaviors of liquids-splashing, squirting, gushing, sloshing, soaking, dripping, draining, trickling, pooling, and pouring-despite tremendous variability in their material and dynamical properties. Here we propose and test a computational model of how people perceive and predict these liquid dynamics, based on coarse approximate simulations of fluids as collections of interacting particles. Our model is analogous to a "game engine in the head", drawing on techniques for interactive simulations (as in video games) that optimize for efficiency and natural appearance rather than physical accuracy. In two behavioral experiments, we found that the model accurately captured people's predictions about how liquids flow

SUBMITTER: Bates CJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6675131 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature