Publications
Encoding Natural Movement as an Agent-Based System
Turner, A. and Penn, A., 2002, Encoding natural movement as an agent-based system: an investigation into human pedestrian behaviour in the built environment. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 29(4):473–490 (BibTeX)
Abstract
Gibson’s ecological theory of perception has received considerable attention within psychology literature, as well as in computer vision and robotics. However, few studies have applied Gibson’s approach to agent-based models of human movement, since the ecological theory requires that individuals have a vision-based mental model of the world, and for large numbers of agents this becomes extremely computationally expensive. Thus, within current pedestrian models, path evaluation is based on calibration from observed data or on sophisticated but deterministic route-choice mechanisms, with little open-ended behavioural modelling of human movement patterns. One solution to allow individuals rapid concurrent access to the visual information within an environment is an ‘exosomatic visual architecture’, where the connections between mutually visible locations within a configuration are prestored in a lookup table. Here we demonstrate that using an exosomatic visual architecture it is possible to develop behavioural models utilising movement rules originating from Gibson’s principle of affordance. We apply large numbers of agents programmed with these rules to a built environment example, and show that by varying parameters such as destination selection, field of view and steps taken between decision points, it is possible to generate aggregate movement levels very similar to those found in an actual building context.
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