Human behaviour modelling through Human Intelligent Movement Software (HIMs)

The concept of sustainable urban environments aims to provide urban facilities including transport interchanges that can accommodate a wide spectrum of the human population irrespective of gender, age or disability. A major objective is to reduce levels of social exclusion which arise from inadequacy in infrastructure that strongly affects certain members of society such as the elderly, disabled and poor. This research focuses on the particular aspect of crowded public spaces where it is envisaged that improvements in crowd flow could be achieved by a proper consideration of all the users of the space but particularly the elderly and disabled. The ultimate objective would be design tools that provide architects with the means to achieve inclusivity in design for the elderly and disabled with relative ease and speed. Therefore, this research has developed a methodology and a computing tool to implement aspects of human walking behaviour in public spaces. Human behaviours have been studied using a large-scale video observation involving over 17,000 subjects. The videos have been analysed to determine a number of different behaviours and their relationship to distinguishing characteristics of the subjects such as age, gender and disability. Algorithms for representing these behaviours have been developed and implemented as a simulation tool (HIMs) within commercially available gaming software. Two case studies, within shopping malls and a bus station, have been carried out to illustrate the feasibility of the work and simple examples of small environmental design changes that significantly affect crowd flow are shown

Human behaviour modelling using gaming software

An important aspect of urban sustainability is concerned with the provision of urban transport systems that are ‘inclusive’ in that they allow full participation in society for older people and people with disa-bilities. Much can be achieved by improving the design of individual aspects of the transport system such as access into public service vehicles, but equally important is the appropriate design of transport inter-changes where crowded situations add an extra dimension to the problems experienced by older and disa-bled people. Simulation of passenger flows is clearly a benefit in this respect but there is a need to under-stand and represent individual human behaviours that together form a dynamic interaction between individuals in crowded spaces. Behaviours have been studied and used in the generation of behavioural rules that have been incorporated in a simulation system based on software originally intended for creat-ing computer games. The simulation has been used to study passenger flows at a major railway station and interchange

Human movement representation in virtual environment using gaming software

Gaming software, DarkBASIC Professional (DBPro) is widely used for the games application. In this research, the software was applied as a tool to simulate human movement and behaviour within virtual environment. Emphasize is to accommodate the largest possible range of humans with diverse abilities as part of AUNT-SUE (Accessibility and Users Needs in Transport – Sustainable Urban Environment) project. Two subjects (adult and older people) were selected as the virtual entities. The virtual entities were modelled based on humans movement and behaviour in the real world. Lowel level validation and example of case study was presented in this paper

Development of a virtual reality platform as a training tool using gaming software

Virtual Reality (VR) is a well-known technology that is applied in many areas including education, medical, manufacturing etc. In the engineering field, VR is commonly used as a toolkit to train humans to perform complex tasks such as aircraft piloting, chemical handling etc. However, the practicality of using gaming software as a VR platform for training purposes needs to be investigated. In this paper, the DarkBASIC Professional (DBPro) gaming software was applied as a VR platform to train humans' adaptability towards new environments. The design of the structure of the VR platform using DBPro is described together with the main elements including 3D modeling, mapping, lighting and sound effects, and player's control. A comparison between the real world and the VR platform was evaluated. Ten selected subjects conveyed positive feedback on the realism of the VR platform through the survey. The results show that the time taken to complete a task was reduced up to 60% after the subjects performed the VR training in advance. It is hoped that the VR platform will support VR training with low development costs and an open source concept

Motion detection using periodic background estimation subtraction method

This paper proposed a motion detection system using periodic background estimation subtraction method for outdoor illumination condition using MATLAB. The proposed method is robust to illumination change effect, change in background and noise. The method basically used background subtraction. The background image is estimated at every 0.8 second when the sum of absolute difference (SAD) is less than the motion threshold. The input image is luminance normalize before background subtraction. The results were converted into binary image by autothreshold and enhanced the results with dilation and erosion. Blobs were created for each motion objects. Experiment results of using background image estimated by periodic background estimation demonstrate their robustness and effectiveness in background subtraction for real world scene

Real-time periodic motion detection and background estimation

Motion detection is a process to detect a changing in position of an object based on its surroundings. This paper, therefore, will present a periodic motion detection and background estimation. This method focussed on outdoor illumination condition. The method used is sturdy to illumination change effect, change in background and noise. Background subtraction is used in this method and the background image is estimated every 0.8 second using timer if the sum of absolute different (SAD) is less than the motion threshold. The input image is uminance normalize before the background subtraction. The results were converted into a binary image by autothreshold and the results were enhanced with dilation and erosion. The blobs were created for each motion object. Experimental results of using a background image estimated by periodic background estimation demonstrated their sturdiness and effectiveness in real-time background subtraction

Emergency evacuation simulation development using game programming

This paper discuss about the development of emergency evacuation simulation using DarkBasic Professional. This simulation was developed to simulate the evacuation performance in the buildings. The building design is designed using 3D World Studio for compatible with DarkBasic Professional. The human entities in the simulation are created with artificial intelligence using Dark AI. There are four option in the simulation that can display to the user which are display entities walking path, obstacles bounds, view arcs, and avoidance angles. The human entities are able to find the shortest path to the destination point with the Dark AI. Although the shortest path is blocked by the obstacles, the human entities are able to find alternative path to the destination unless no other path. This simulation will compute the total evacuation time after all the human entities have evacuated