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 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

An 'inclusive design' approach to human behaviour modelling and simulation

‘Inclusive design’ is an important approach in product development that aims to estimate the numbers of people potentially excluded from the developed product. However, there is limited consideration of ‘inclusive design’ in computer aided design systems, especially in crowd modelling and simulation. This research aims to apply the ‘inclusive design’ approach to human behaviour modelling and simulation in crowded spaces based on video observation analysis. Conceptual behaviours are developed as guidelines to understand human movement and behaviour within the recorded video. The research is based on the ‘inclusive design’ approach and behaviours have been acquired from three major human movements of free, same direction and opposite direction movement. Almost 19,000 individual humans were observed within six hours of video recording and categorized into six different behaviours

Automatic generation of computer animated sequences based on human behaviour modelling

Presentado a la International Conference in Computer Graphics and Artificial Intelligence (3IA), 2007, Athens (Greece).This paper presents a complete framework to automatically generate synthetic image sequences by designing and simulating complex human behaviors in virtual environments. Given an initial state of a virtual agent, a simulation process generates posterior synthetic states by means of precomputed human motion and behavior models, taking into account the relationships of such an agent w.r.t its environment at each frame step. The resulting status sequence is further visualized into a virtual scene using a 3D graphic engine. Conceptual knowledge about human behavior patterns is represented using the Situation Graph Tree formalism and a rule-based inference system called F-Limette. Results obtained are very helpful for testing human interaction with real environments, such as a pedestrian crossing scenario, and for virtual storytelling, to automatically generate animated sequences.This work was supported by the project 'Integration of robust perception, learning, and navigation systems in mobile robotics' (J-0929).This work has been supported by EC grants IST-027110 for the HERMES project and IST-045547 for the VIDI-Video project, and by the Spanish MEC under projects TIN2006-14606 and DPI-2004-5414. Jordi Gonzàlez also acknowledges the support of a Juan de la Cierva Postdoctoral fellowship from the Spanish MEC.Peer Reviewe

Automatic generation of computer animated sequences based on human behaviour modelling

This paper presents a complete framework to automatically generate synthetic image sequences by designing and simulating complex human behaviors in virtual environments. Given an initial state of a virtual agent, a simulation process generates posterior synthetic states by means of precomputed human motion and behavior models, taking into account the relationships of such an agent w.r.t its environment at each frame step. The resulting status sequence is further visualized into a virtual scene using a 3D graphic engine. Conceptual knowledge about human behavior patterns is represented using the Situation Graph Tree formalism and a rule-based inference system called F-Limette. Results obtained are very helpful for testing human interaction with real environments, such as a pedestrian crossing scenario, and for virtual storytelling, to automatically generate animated sequences.Peer Reviewe

Human behaviour modelling in complex socio-technical systems : an agent based approach

For many years we have been striving to understand human behaviour and our interactions with our socio-technological environment. By advancing our knowledge in this area, we have helped the design of new or improved work processes and technologies. Historically, much of the work in analysing social interactions has been conducted within the social sciences. However, computer simulation has brought an extra tool in trying to understand and model human behaviours. Using an agent based approach this presentation describes my work in constructing computational models of human behaviour for informing design through simulation. With examples from projects in two main application areas of crisis and emergency management, and energy management I describe how my work addresses some main issues in agent based social simulation. The first concerns the process by which we develop these models. The second lies in the nature of socio-technical systems. Human societies are a perfect example of a complex system exhibiting characteristics of self-organisation, adaptability and showing emergent phenomena such as cooperation and robustness. I describe how complex systems theory may be applied to improve our understanding of socio-technical systems, and how our micro level interactions lead to emergent mutual awareness for problem-solving. From agent based simulation systems I show how context awareness may be modelled. Looking forward to the future, I discuss how the increasing prevalence of artificial agents in our society will cause us to re-examine the new types of interactions and cooperative behaviours that will emerge.Depuis de nombreuses années, nous nous sommes efforcés de comprendre le comportement humain et nos interactions avec l'environnement sociotechnique. Grâce à l'avancée de nos connaissances dans ce domaine, nous avons contribué à la conception de technologies et de processus de travail nouveaux ou améliorés. Historiquement, une part importante du travail d'analyse des interactions sociales fut entreprise au sein des sciences sociales. Cependant, la simulation informatique a apporté un nouvel outil pour tenter de comprendre et de modéliser les comportements humains. En utilisant une approche à base d'agents, cette présentation décrit mon travail sur la construction de modèles informatiques du comportement humain pour guider la conception par la simulation. A l'aide d'exemples issus de projets des deux domaines d'application que sont la gestion des crises et de l'urgence et la gestion de l'énergie, je décris comment mon travail aborde certains problèmes centraux à la simulation sociale à base d'agents. Le premier concerne le processus par lequel nous développons ces modèles. Le second problème provient de la nature des systèmes sociotechniques. Les sociétés humaines constituent un exemple parfait de système complexe possédant des caractéristiques d'auto-organisation et d'adaptabilité, et affichant des phénomènes émergents tels que la coopération et la robustesse. Je décris comment la théorie des systèmes complexes peut être appliquée pour améliorer notre compréhension des systèmes sociotechniques, et comment nos interactions au niveau microscopique mènent à l'émergence d'une conscience mutuelle pour la résolution de problèmes. A partir de systèmes de simulation à base d'agents, je montre comment la conscience du contexte peut être modélisée. En terme de perspectives, j'expliquerai comment la hausse de la prévalence des agents artificiels dans notre société nous forcera à considérer de nouveaux types d'interactions et de comportements coopératifs

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.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

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.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

INTEROPERABILITY FOR MODELING AND SIMULATION IN MARITIME EXTENDED FRAMEWORK

This thesis reports on the most relevant researches performed during the years of the Ph.D. at the Genova University and within the Simulation Team. The researches have been performed according to M&S well known recognized standards. The studies performed on interoperable simulation cover all the environments of the Extended Maritime Framework, namely Sea Surface, Underwater, Air, Coast & Land, Space and Cyber Space. The applications cover both the civil and defence domain. The aim is to demonstrate the potential of M&S applications for the Extended Maritime Framework, applied to innovative unmanned vehicles as well as to traditional assets, human personnel included. A variety of techniques and methodology have been fruitfully applied in the researches, ranging from interoperable simulation, discrete event simulation, stochastic simulation, artificial intelligence, decision support system and even human behaviour modelling