Random Walk Behavior?

Development Programming & Scripting
1

I’m very new to UE4, so thanks in advance fo your help. I’m trying to set up a wandering AI behavior that would more closely mimic a true random walk or brownian motion than just picking a series of reachable points, while still maintaining navmesh functionality, obstacle avoidance, collisions, etc.

I’m trying to make a social distancing visualization, so I want a large number of NPCs to move around randomly and interact with each other, while the player can tweak various variables, obstacles, goals, probabilities, etc. to see different effects on a theoretical infection rate. My idea is to have the NPCs select a random reachable destination at a fixed distance, so they will change directions at regular intervals rather than walking long straight paths.

Here are my noob questions:
-How can I accomplish this? (lol)
-I’m fine with the geometry just being capsules for this, so what base class would be best to start with?
-Are there design considerations I should take into account to facilitate spawning and running as many NPCs as possible?

Thanks in advance for your help!

2

theres a setting in ai blueprints movement called “use RVO avoidance” however this can get complicated and doesnt always work right. Im not sure if this would work but you could make a blueprint with a giant sphere and mark it as an obstacle ( and make the sphere 6 feet big) then make the sphere invisible and spawn and attach it to your npcs. I think that should work.