As a facility that offers an important service to its users, a hospital can be considered as a production unit ; a unit that provides health-care service. Therefore, a range of factors that facilitate this service (i.e. healthcare) need to be considered when speaking of improving the productivity in a hospital ward. Evidence suggests that one of the main factors that affect the productivity level of a hospital ward is how the design of the hospital deals with access and circulation of the people inside the ward (e.g. Joseph and Ulrich, 2007). A productivity-oriented circulation system will need to improve staff performance; enhance patients safety, privacy and rate of recovery; minimise the risk of cross-infection; reduce the delay time of external service delivery; create a more welcoming environment for visitors; and reduce the evacuation time in emergency situations. Thus, the need to design ward layouts that benefit from the most effective circulation system cannot be over-emphasised. The study presented in this thesis focused on finding a method for identifying different systems of access and people circulation in hospital wards and how they could affect nursing staff productivity. The study comprised five main phases. The first phase involved a literature review of existing healthcare environments to identify different types of access and people circulation requirements. In the second phase, data on nursing staff s movements were collected from a case study. The third phase focused on categorising and modelling the existing approaches and layout design systems. Phase four provided a comparative study of different categories of people circulation designs and contrasted their advantages and disadvantages to improve access and people circulation. In the fifth and final phase, the study concluded with proposing guidelines for choosing between different layout options in the design of new hospital wards or the refurbishment of the existing ones. Findings of the study included: further empirical and analytical support for the impact of the ward design on nursing staff s performance; a ranking of the suitability of different design layouts for minimising staff s unnecessary walking in wards similar to the case study; the importance of considering different staff members needs in such analyses; and a ranking of the criticality of different routes within a ward.

In this competitive world with rapid growth of markets, the main goal of any company is to attain an edge over its competitors. In order to achieve this goal a company has to continually improve its process and eliminate the wastes in the process while not compromising on the quality of the product and customer satisfaction. Though Eco Supplies Solar AB is one of the largest producers of Photovoltaic solar modules in Scandinavia, the need for improvement is vital to match with growing requirements and to maintain its position in the market. This master thesis was done for Eco Supplies Solar AB, so as to help them identify the waste along their value stream process. The project was divided into three phases. The first phase of the project was to map and analyze the plant layout as well as analyze the worker movement. This helped to understand the various movements through the entire process of production and the associated distances and time. The second phase of the thesis was the execution of the Value Stream Mapping. For this purpose the entire production process was walked through and through several interviews the data was collected. The current state value stream map gave a one page static picture of the key areas of waste within the process and to suggest necessary changes so as to improve the efficiency. The suggested changes are implemented and the future state map is drawn. The results from the current state and future state map are calculated theoretically and analyzed. The third phase is the use of Simulation to understand the behavioral effects of each the processes and to determine the overall change in productivity if the changes are implemented. It is difficult to implement changes in a production plant that works continuously for 24 hours. That would interrupt production and also lead to large costs. The easier and most optimal solution to implement changes, understand the behavior of each process before and after the changes and to analyze the changes is to run a simulation model of the current and future state. The simulation is done using Extend Sim software and the results are analyzed further. The main aim of the thesis was to analyze the current plant layout and the product process and develop a methodology to identify visualize and measure the wastes in the production process of Photovoltaic solar modules.

With robots becoming increasingly common in human occupied spaces, there has been a growing body of research into the problem of socially conscious robot navigation. A robot must be able to predict and anticipate the movements of people around it in order to navigate in a way that is socially acceptable, or it may face rejection and therefore failure. Often this motion prediction is achieved using neural networks or artificial intelligence to predict the trajectories or flow of people, requiring large amounts of expensive and time-consuming real-world data collection. Therefore, many recent studies have attempted to find a way to create simulated human trajectory data. A variety of methods have been used to achieve this, the main ones being path planning algorithms and pedestrian simulators, but no study has evaluated these methods against each other and real-world data. This thesis compares the ability of two path planning algorithms (A* and RRT*) and a pedestrian simulator (PTV Vissim) to make realistic maps of dynamics. It concludes that A*-based path planners are the best choice when balancing the ability to replicate realistic people flow with the ease of generating large amounts of data.

Detta examensarbete fokuserar på utveckling och utvärdering av en ny metod för att räkna dubbelriktade personflöden inomhus med hjälp av Ultrasonic Time-of-Flight teknik. Projektets huvudsyfte är att skapa en kostnadseffektiv, strömsnål och integritetsvänlig lösning som är i linje med lagar som GDPR. Studien börjar med en kort genomgång av tillgängliga tekniker för personflödesmätning, men det blir tydligt att dessa tekniker brister i kraven för den önskade tekniken. Mot denna bakgrund framstår Ultrasonic Time-of-Flight som en lovande kandidat på grund av sin förmåga att detektera objekt och rörelseriktningar utan att samla in personligt identifierbar information. För att realisera detta projekt har ett utvecklingskit baserat på sensorn CH201 från Chirp Microsystems använts. Sensorns låga strömförbrukning och förmåga att mäta avstånd i ett brett synfält är det som är lovande i tekniken. Ett akustiskt hölje optimerar sensorernas synfält och minimerar störningar. Experimentdelen av arbetet inkluderar uppbyggnaden av en testmiljö där sensorernas förmåga att korrekt räkna individer och bestämma deras rörelseriktning testas. Resultaten från dessa tester visar på hög noggrannhet i detektering av enskilda individer som passerar, men har lägre noggrannhet då flera personer passerar samtidigt. Vidare diskuteras potentialen för att vidareutveckla systemet för att även kunna hantera större personflöden och mer komplexa scenarion, som flera personer som rör sig bredvid varandra i olika riktningar. En kritisk granskning av systemets prestanda under längre tidsperioder och i olika miljöer föreslås som framtida forskningsarbete för att ytterligare validera och förbättra tekniken. Sammanfattningsvis demonstrerar detta arbete potentialen hos tekniken som en säker och integritetsvänlig lösning för effektiv övervakning av personflöden. Med ytterligare utveckling och anpassning förväntas tekniken kunna uppfylla en ännu högre noggrannhet. / This thesis focuses on the development and evaluation of a new method for measuring bidirectional indoor people flows using Ultrasonic Time-of-Flight technology. The main purpose of the project is to create a cost-effective, low-power, and privacy-friendly solution that complies with laws like the GDPR. It begins with a short review of existing techniques for measuring people flow, concluding that these technologies do not support the goal of the new technology. Ultrasonic Time-of-Flight emerges as a promising candidate due to its ability to detect objects and directions of movement without collecting personally identifiable information. To realize this project, a development kit based on the CH201 sensor from ChirpMicrosystems has been used. The sensor’s low power consumption and ability to measure distances in a wide field of view are what made the technology promising. An acoustic enclosure optimizes the sensors’ field of view and minimizes interference. The experimental part of the work includes the construction of a test environment where the sensors’ ability to accurately count individuals and determine their direction of movement is tested. The results from these tests show high accuracy in detecting individual passersby but encounter more problems with multiple individuals simultaneously. Further discussions will explore the potential for developing the system to manage larger crowds and more complex scenarios, such as multiple people moving side by side in different directions. A critical review of the system’s performance over longer periods and in different environments is proposed as future research work to further validate and improve the technology. In conclusion, this work demonstrates the potential of the technology as a secure and privacy-friendly solution for effective monitoring of people flows. With further development and adaptation, the technology is expected to offer significantly better accuracy.

V dnešním světě je neustále se zvyšující poptávka po spolehlivých automatizovaných mechanismech pro detekci a lokalizaci osob pro různé účely -- od analýzy pohybu návštěvníků v muzeích přes ovládání chytrých domovů až po hlídání nebezpečných oblastí, jimiž jsou například nástupiště vlakových stanic. Představujeme metodu detekce a lokalizace osob s pomocí nízkonákladových termálních kamer FLIR Lepton 3.5 a malých počítačů Raspberry Pi 3B+. Tento projekt, navazující na předchozí bakalářský projekt "Detekce lidí v místnosti za použití nízkonákladové termální kamery", nově podporuje modelování komplexních scén s polygonálními okraji a více termálními kamerami. V této práci představujeme vylepšenou knihovnu řízení a snímání pro kameru Lepton 3.5, novou techniku detekce lidí používající nejmodernější YOLO (You Only Look Once) detektor objektů v reálném čase, založený na hlubokých neuronových sítích, dále novou automaticky konfigurovatelnou termální jednotku, chráněnou schránkou z 3D tiskárny pro bezpečnou manipulaci, a v neposlední řadě také podrobný návod instalace detekčního systému do nového prostředí a další podpůrné nástroje a vylepšení. Výsledky nového systému demonstrujeme příkladem analýzy pohybu osob v Národním muzeu v Praze.