Adaptive Network Model for Assisting People with Disabilities through Crowd Monitoring and Control

Abstract

Here, we present an effective application of adaptive cooperative networks, namely assisting disables in navigating in a crowd in a pandemic or emergency situation. To achieve this, we model crowd movement and introduce a cooperative learning approach to enable cooperation and self-organization of the crowd members with impaired health or on wheelchairs to ensure their safe movement in the crowd. Here, it is assumed that the movement path and the varying locations of the other crowd members can be estimated by each agent. Therefore, the network nodes (agents) should continuously reorganize themselves by varying their speeds and distances from each other, from the surrounding walls, and from obstacles within a predefined limit. It is also demonstrated how the available wireless trackers such as AirTags can be used for this purpose. The model effectiveness is examined with respect to the real-time changes in environmental parameters and its efficacy is verified.

Keywords

• adaptive networks
• assistive technologies
• AirTag
• crowd monitoring
• disability
• pandemic