GPU accelerated Nature Inspired Methods for Modelling Large Scale Bi-Directional Pedestrian Movement

Pedestrian movement, although ubiquitous and well-studied, is still not that well understood due to the complicating nature of the embedded social dynamics. Interest among researchers in simulating pedestrian movement and interactions has grown significantly in part due to increased computational and visualization capabilities afforded by high power computing. Different approaches have been adopted to simulate pedestrian movement under various circumstances and interactions. In the present work, bi-directional crowd movement is simulated where an equal numbers of individuals try to reach the opposite sides of an environment. Two movement methods are considered. First a Least Effort Model (LEM) is investigated where agents try to take an optimal path with as minimal changes from their intended path as possible. Following this, a modified form of Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is proposed, where individuals are guided by a goal of reaching the other side in a least effort mode as well as a pheromone trail left by predecessors. The basic idea is to increase agent interaction, thereby more closely reflecting a real world scenario. The methodology utilizes Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) for general purpose computing using the CUDA platform. Because of the inherent parallel properties associated with pedestrian movement such as proximate interactions of individuals on a 2D grid, GPUs are well suited. The main feature of the implementation undertaken here is that the parallelism is data driven. The data driven implementation leads to a speedup up to 18x compared to its sequential counterpart running on a single threaded CPU. The numbers of pedestrians considered in the model ranged from 2K to 100K representing numbers typical of mass gathering events. A detailed discussion addresses implementation challenges faced and averted

An Agent-Based Approach to Self-Organized Production

The chapter describes the modeling of a material handling system with the production of individual units in a scheduled order. The units represent the agents in the model and are transported in the system which is abstracted as a directed graph. Since the hindrances of units on their path to the destination can lead to inefficiencies in the production, the blockages of units are to be reduced. Therefore, the units operate in the system by means of local interactions in the conveying elements and indirect interactions based on a measure of possible hindrances. If most of the units behave cooperatively ("socially"), the blockings in the system are reduced. A simulation based on the model shows the collective behavior of the units in the system. The transport processes in the simulation can be compared with the processes in a real plant, which gives conclusions about the consequencies for the production based on the superordinate planning.Comment: For related work see http://www.soms.ethz.c

SymbioCity: Smart Cities for Smarter Networks

The "Smart City" (SC) concept revolves around the idea of embodying cutting-edge ICT solutions in the very fabric of future cities, in order to offer new and better services to citizens while lowering the city management costs, both in monetary, social, and environmental terms. In this framework, communication technologies are perceived as subservient to the SC services, providing the means to collect and process the data needed to make the services function. In this paper, we propose a new vision in which technology and SC services are designed to take advantage of each other in a symbiotic manner. According to this new paradigm, which we call "SymbioCity", SC services can indeed be exploited to improve the performance of the same communication systems that provide them with data. Suggestive examples of this symbiotic ecosystem are discussed in the paper. The dissertation is then substantiated in a proof-of-concept case study, where we show how the traffic monitoring service provided by the London Smart City initiative can be used to predict the density of users in a certain zone and optimize the cellular service in that area.Comment: 14 pages, submitted for publication to ETT Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologie

Attentive monitoring of multiple video streams driven by a Bayesian foraging strategy

In this paper we shall consider the problem of deploying attention to subsets of the video streams for collating the most relevant data and information of interest related to a given task. We formalize this monitoring problem as a foraging problem. We propose a probabilistic framework to model observer's attentive behavior as the behavior of a forager. The forager, moment to moment, focuses its attention on the most informative stream/camera, detects interesting objects or activities, or switches to a more profitable stream. The approach proposed here is suitable to be exploited for multi-stream video summarization. Meanwhile, it can serve as a preliminary step for more sophisticated video surveillance, e.g. activity and behavior analysis. Experimental results achieved on the UCR Videoweb Activities Dataset, a publicly available dataset, are presented to illustrate the utility of the proposed technique.Comment: Accepted to IEEE Transactions on Image Processin

Real Time Animation of Virtual Humans: A Trade-off Between Naturalness and Control

Virtual humans are employed in many interactive applications using 3D virtual environments, including (serious) games. The motion of such virtual humans should look realistic (or ‘natural’) and allow interaction with the surroundings and other (virtual) humans. Current animation techniques differ in the trade-off they offer between motion naturalness and the control that can be exerted over the motion. We show mechanisms to parametrize, combine (on different body parts) and concatenate motions generated by different animation techniques. We discuss several aspects of motion naturalness and show how it can be evaluated. We conclude by showing the promise of combinations of different animation paradigms to enhance both naturalness and control