Human centric accessibility graph for environment analysis

What is it about?

Understanding the vast abilities and disabilities of humans is an enormous task not feasible for a single designer. This research helps solve this issue by automatically finding accessible locations and paths in a 3D model. It builds what is known as a Navigation Graph at a very high resolution. This type of graph can be used for robotics and game characters to plan a path/route for navigating in a virtual world. In the paper, a few examples of how this graph can be used for not only accessibility, but visibility, energy expenditure, and in general any space-related metric. There are multiple ways human factors can be analyzed in the built environment, and existing biomechanics literature provides a good start (although more work is needed). The algorithm developed in the paper has broad use, including machine learning. For example, the paper proposes using such a grid system for automatically laying out environments by evaluating them with human factors metrics to improve the experience of an occupant.

Featured Image

Photo by Jakub Pabis on Unsplash

Photo by Jakub Pabis on Unsplash