Crowd Navigation Research Articles

P53 binding to human genome: crowd control navigation in chromatin context.

p53 is the most studied human protein because of its role in maintaining genomic stability. Binding to genomic targets is essential for transcription-dependent p53 tumor suppression, but how p53 selects targets remains unclear. Here, the impact of chromatin context on p53 genome-wide binding and targets selection is discussed. It is proposed that p53 genomic binding serves not only to regulate transcription, but to sense epigenomic changes threatening the genomic integrity. The problem of p53 navigating the human genome is discussed with respect to the degenerate p53 binding motif. This discussion relates to the fundamental problem of DNA binding factors navigating large genomes in search for cognate binding sites.

Cooperative passers-by tracking with a mobile robot and external cameras

In this paper, we present a cooperative passers-by tracking system between fixed view wall mounted cameras and a mobile robot. The proposed system fuses visual detections from wall mounted cameras and detections from a mobile robot–in a centralized manner–employing a “tracking-by-detection” approach within a Particle Filtering strategy. This tracking information is then used to endow the robot with passers-by avoidance ability to facilitate its navigation in crowds during the execution of a person following mission. The multi-person tracker’s ability to track passers-by near the robot distinctively is demonstrated through qualitative and quantitative off-line experiments. Finally, the designed perceptual modalities are deployed on our robotic platform, controlling its actuators via visual servoing techniques and free space diagrams in the vicinity of the robot, to illustrate the robot’s ability to follow a given target person in human crowded areas.

Navigation in human crowds; testing the many-wrongs principle

The ‘many-wrongs principle’ predicts that animal group cohesion can cause groups to navigate more accurately than singletons. Recent theoretical work using individual-based simulations and several empirical studies of bird flock behaviour support this principle. However, for real animal groups it remains unclear what key factors are involved and whether group cohesion alone can act to produce the effect. We tested model predictions using human participants in a large circular arena. They were tested alone and in groups of two, three, six and 10, in three trials. For each trial, individuals were instructed to stay together and approach a preset but unmarked target on the arena perimeter. The target instruction included a degree of directional uncertainty of 22.5°, 67.5° or 112.5°. Individual directional uncertainty was equal for each group member within a trial, but differed between trials. As expected, we found that groups comprising individuals with lower directional uncertainty navigated more accurately. Group navigational accuracy increased with group size but only between singletons and groups of 10 and only when individuals had a high directional uncertainty of 112.5°. This study provides evidence in human groups that group cohesion can increase navigational accuracy but that this effect is restricted to larger group sizes and when individual directional uncertainty is high.