Simulation of human movement and behaviour in crowded spaces using gaming software

This paper discusses the development of human movement and behaviour simulation in crowded spaces as part of the AUNT-SUE (Accessibility and User Needs in Transport for Sustainable Urban Environments) research project. The research starts with applying a video observational method to understand human movement and behaviour in crowded spaces in the real world. Six hours of video were recorded at a multi-mode transportation system and almost 19,000 individual human movements and behaviours were analyzed. Six types of behaviour were derived from the three major movements of free, opposite and same direction. Six factors affecting human movement and behaviour were recognized from the video analysis. The DarkBASIC Professional gaming software was used to simulate the human movement and behaviour in the virtual world. The six factors affecting human movement and behaviour were considered as the parameters for the virtual humans. Case studies considering multi-mode transportation systems, bottleneck and non-bottleneck situations were applied to validate the prototype software system

Relationships, Human Behaviour and Financial Transactions

It is widely known that relationships and human behaviours such as trust, reciprocity and altruism that are observed in the human societies are capable of facilitating financial transactions. This paper proposes a theoretical model to argue that though these elements can facilitate financial transactions, they may not always ensure efficiency in the sense of creation of additional wealth. As financial resources are scarce, the paper argues that the financial transactions induced by relationships, trust, reciprocity and altruism may lead to inefficient allocations of resources

Understanding Social and Behaviour Change Communication

terms that should be understood first, as different words and second as an entity. SBCC is primarily a brand of communication that has long existed in the social and behavioural disciplines; in the social sciences and humanities. It is also a field of study that is strongly anchored on theories of human behaviour and the philosophies of human existence with the aim of bringing about a transformation of the negative human behaviour through the ecological system. Behaviour change specifically has attracted the concerns of economists and advertisers. Economists are concerned about human needs and wants as determined by human behavio

Human behaviour-based automatic depression analysis using hand-crafted statistics and deep learned spectral features

Depression is a serious mental disorder that affects millions of people all over the world. Traditional clinical diagnosis methods are subjective, complicated and need extensive participation of experts. Audio-visual automatic depression analysis systems predominantly base their predictions on very brief sequential segments, sometimes as little as one frame. Such data contains much redundant information, causes a high computational load, and negatively affects the detection accuracy. Final decision making at the sequence level is then based on the fusion of frame or segment level predictions. However, this approach loses longer term behavioural correlations, as the behaviours themselves are abstracted away by the frame-level predictions. We propose to on the one hand use automatically detected human behaviour primitives such as Gaze directions, Facial action units (AU), etc. as low-dimensional multi-channel time series data, which can then be used to create two sequence descriptors. The first calculates the sequence-level statistics of the behaviour primitives and the second casts the problem as a Convolutional Neural Network problem operating on a spectral representation of the multichannel behaviour signals. The results of depression detection (binary classification) and severity estimation (regression) experiments conducted on the AVEC 2016 DAIC-WOZ database show that both methods achieved significant improvement compared to the previous state of the art in terms of the depression severity estimation

A model of the electrical behaviour of myelinated sensory nerve fibres based on human data

Calculation of the response of human myelinated sensory nerve fibres to spinal cord stimulation initiated the development of a fibre model based on electro-physiological and morphometric data for human sensory nerve fibres. The model encompasses a mathematical description of the kinetics of the nodal membrane, and a non-linear fibre geometry. Fine tuning of only a few, not well-established parameters was performed by fitting the shape of a propagating action potential and its diameter-dependent propagation velocity. The quantitative behaviour of this model corresponds better to experimentally determined human fibre properties than other mammalian, non-human models do. Typical characteristics, such as the shape of the action potential, the propagation velocity and the strength-duration behaviour show a good fit with experimental data. The introduced diameter-dependent parameters did not result in a noticeable diameter dependency of action potential duration and refractory period. The presented model provides an improved tool to analyse the electrical behaviour of human myelinated sensory nerve fibres

Antenna Behaviour in the Presence of Human Body

Mobile phones are widely used nowadays. The demand in the new generations of mobile phones is better performance. Typically the mobile phone performance is derived assuming an ideal antenna impedance of 50Ω. Some work has been done in understanding the behaviour of the antenna impedance in a real environment [1], [2], [3]. This work continued the exploration of the difference between the ideal antenna impedance and the antenna impedance in a real environment. In particular the analysis was carried out measuring the antenna impedance in presence of the human body and relating it to the position of the hand and of the hand + head. Two types of antennas were considered: PIFA antennas and ceramic antennas. Several positions of the hand and of the hand + head were considered. These positions were selected after an accurate study about how people on the street normally handle their mobile phones. The study consisted of two steps: 1) observation of the typical positions of the hand and of the\ud hand + head with respect to the mobile phone; 2) their imitation in the lab for the measurements The outcome of the investigation was the changing of the impedance is primary due to a changing of its imaginary part. The real part is affected but not in dramatic way

Territoriality and playground disturbances : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Education

The concept of 'territoriality' has become a fairly common term within social scientific literature - and yet its application in the analysis of human behaviour appears to have been made with little reference to, or regard for, the concept's original form. The present investigation serves two purposes - first, to attempt to use the concept in the description and explanation of the etiology of social disturbances in school settings; and second, to look closely at the concept and assess its general worth in the analysis of human behaviour. Before investigating the possibility of a correlation between disturbances and the manifestation of territoriality, observations were made of the school pupil population during intervals to establish whether or not the pupils tended to occupy specific locations for protracted lengths of time - perhaps the most basic requisite of territorial behaviour. Observers gathered data in terms of the specific activities occurring and the sex and number of players. Time sampling was used, and the data confirmed that pupils do tend to return to the same geographical location to perform the same activity over a period of time. The stability of the pupil activity groups over time provided the foundation for a participant observer subsequently to investigate a second feature of territoriality - that territories are defended. The observer's task was to interview those involved in identified disturbances, and attempt to establish the etiology of the disturbance. The hypothesis was that the disturbances would be a function of the territorial behaviour of the groups. In so far as territorial behaviour can be defined in terms of Barker's (1968) 'maintenance mechanisms', the hypothesis was supported. 83% of disturbances were deemed to involve at least one feature of territoriality - be it membership, equipment, space, boundaries, or a combination of these. A further feature of the concept of 'territoriality' within animal behavioural research is that the territorial group members recognise each other on the basis of certain membership criteria. Within the pupil activity groups observed to investigate this feature among humans, membership criteria were also found to exist. These criteria were identified as being sex, class level, the amount of space available, family relationships, and physical size. On the basis of these criteria pupils were observed to be accepted or rejected from activity groups during school intervals. The findings of these initial investigations into the existence of three features of animal territoriality within human group behaviour, lend weight to an acceptance of the concept of territoriality as an adequate unit of analysis in the explanation of human group behaviour. However, throughout the investigations certain assumptions which underlie the concept tended to surface from time to time and raise doubts about the concept's applicability in human behavioural analysis. These assumptions included the idea that the territorial behaviour was manifested by members of both sexes; that territorial groups were family groups only; and that territorial behaviour was designed to repel intruders. All of these were shown in the present study to be not accurate. Added to these assumptions, the ethological literature reflects two crucial points of dissention. Ethologists, it seems, can not agree whether or not man is a territorial species. Again, among those who do accept that man is a territorial species, there is an argument over whether the territorial behaviour manifested by man is learned or instinctive. There are apparent problems in transferring a unit of analysis of animal behaviour to cover human behaviour as well. The problems are accentuated in the assumptions and debates outlined above, and compounded by the fact that within the social sciences there already exists a number of other theories and concepts which serve to explain the same human behaviour as territoriality attempts to do. While not completely rejecting the applicability of the concept of territoriality within human behavioural analysis, the conclusion arrived at was that the concept was of limited utility to the social scientist

Autism, the Integrations of 'Difference' and the Origins of Modern Human Behaviour

It is proposed here that the archaeological evidence for the emergence of 'modern behaviour' (160,000-40,000 bp) can best be explained as the rise of cognitive variation within populations through social mechanisms for integrating 'different minds', rather than by the development of a single 'modern human mind'. Autism and the autistic spectrum within human populations are used as an example of 'different minds' which when integrated within society can confer various selective benefits. It is proposed that social mechanisms for incorporating autistic difference are visible in the archaeological record and that these develop sporadically from 160,000 years bp in association with evidence for their consequences in terms of technological innovations, improved efficiency in technological and natural spheres and innovative thinking. Whilst other explanations for the emergence Of modern human behaviour may also contribute to observed changes, it is argued that the incorporation of cognitive differences played a significant role in the technological, social and symbolic expression of 'modern' behaviour