Adaptive Crowd Guidance via Movable Walls and Sensors
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional crowd management systems are rigid and passive, failing to adapt to changing crowd dynamics, leading to unsafe behaviors such as agglomerations and compressive asphyxia.
Innovation Solution
A control system and method that uses movable walls, detectors, projectors, and speakers to analyze crowd statistics and dynamically adjust paths, guiding the crowd through adaptive paths by articulating walls and providing visual and audio indications.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If conventional rigid and passive structures (fences, barriers, turnstiles) are used to control crowds, then crowd flow can be channeled through specific points, but the structures cannot adapt to changing crowd dynamics, leading to unsafe behaviors such as agglomerations and compressive asphyxia
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements movable walls that can dynamically change position and configuration based on real-time crowd detection. The walls transition from static to movable structures, allowing the system to adapt to varying crowd densities and flow patterns, thereby preventing agglomerations and unsafe conditions while maintaining manageable system complexity through automated control.
Solution Approach 2:
The system incorporates detectors that continuously monitor crowd behavior and provide feedback to the control unit. This feedback loop enables the movable walls to adjust their positions in response to detected crowd patterns, creating an adaptive system that can prevent unsafe conditions without requiring overly complex manual intervention structures.
2Adaptability or versatility
If movable walls are used to create adaptive paths, then crowd flow can be dynamically adjusted, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The crowd management area is divided into multiple zones with individually controllable movable walls. Each wall or group of walls can be independently actuated based on local crowd conditions detected by distributed sensors. This segmentation allows adaptive path generation throughout the area while managing overall system complexity through modular, distributed control rather than requiring centralized manipulation of all walls simultaneously.
3Reliability
If conventional passive structures are used, then the system is simpler to implement, but unsafe crowd behaviors such as agglomerations and compressive asphyxia occur
Solution Approach 1:
The system employs detectors and control units that automatically monitor crowd conditions and actuate movable walls without requiring constant human intervention. The system serves itself by detecting unsafe conditions and autonomously adjusting wall positions to prevent agglomerations and compressive asphyxia, thereby improving crowd safety while avoiding the complexity of manual control systems.
Data Source
AI summary
A control system to guide a crowd, including a detection module to provide stepping signals from the crowd via a plurality of detectors placed on a walking surface of the control system, a sorting module to provide a favorable path for the crowd, the sorting module including a plurality of movable walls, each movable wall of the plurality of movable walls being independently articulated from an open position to a closed position to provide the favorable path, and an electrical control module configured to convert the stepping signals into statistics, determine the favorable path based on the statistics, and articulate the plurality of movable walls to force the crowd through the favorable path.