Optimal Pedestrian Path Planning in Evacuation Scenario

Simulation of evacuation plans is a relatively complex problem. It is necessary to simulate a number of separate processes which interact in the result. Namely, they are pedestrian-pedestrian interactions, pedestrian-static object (e.g. wall) interactions and pedestrian-environment (fire, smoke, etc.) interactions. In this case, the evacuation simulation is controled on the microscopic level. Microscopic level considers each individual separately and pedestrian is planning his/her path to the exit with regard to the above-mentioned interactions. In this article we focus on path planning during evacuation and describe algorithms applied in this area. At the end we propose a method of the space evaluation with linear time complexity and planned path compared with commercial software tools

Experimental Analysis of the Prediction Model Based on String Invariants

A new approach of the string theory called the Prediction Model Based on String Invariants (PMBSI) was applied here to time-series forecast. We used 2-end-point open string that satisfies the Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions. The initial motivation was to transfer modern physical ideas into the neighboring field called econophysics. The physical statistical viewpoint has proved to be fruitful, namely in the description of systems where many-body effects dominate. However, PMBSI is not limited to financial forecast. The main advantage of PMBSI include absence of the learning phase when large number of parameters must be set. Comparative experimental analysis of PMBSI vs. SVM was performed and the results on artificial and real-world data are presented. PMBSI performance was in a close match with SVM

Artificial Intelligence Aggregating Opinions of a Group of People

This study deals with the problems of aggregating the opinions of a group of people in such a way that the quality of the group decision surpasses the quality of the decision of the most experienced individual within the group. The methods we have studied fall in the research domain of the so called collective intelligence. We provide an overview of the state-of-the-art in the collective intelligence. We describe the method based on adaptive boosting we have proposed aggregatig the opinions of a group of people. We have implemented a web application to gather opinions of people and used the application to collect data for the experimental analysis. The model problem was to identify whether there is or there is not a tumor present in the series of X-ray images of human lungs. We have compared our proposed method to conventional methods such as majority voting. We have concluded that our proposed method can be successfully used to aggregate opinions of a group of people to increase their collective intelligence above the level of the most successful individual within the group in many cases. We have observed that the highest increase in the collective intelligence may be achieved for intelligence wise homogeneous groups what confirms the results of previous studies

Long-Exposure RGB Photography with a Fixed Stand for the Measurement of a Trajectory of a Dynamic Impact Device in Real Scale

The present manuscript proposes a novel method for the measurement of a trajectory of a falling impact hammer in the dynamic loading of conveyor belts and the determination of their impact resistance. The proposed method has been experimentally tested and the results of the measurements are presented in this manuscript. The proposed method is based on the long-exposure photography with a long-duration opened shutter of the Nikon D5000 DSLR camera. Results of the experimental research were compared with direct reference measurements performed using the L-GAGE LT3 laser distance sensor. Differences between values, obtained by the new method and by the reference measurements were up to ±3 mm. The standard deviation identified in all the experiments was 1 mm