Studying collective behavior in humans
Experimental system
Synch.Live is an experimental system designed by artists and scientists as an open technology sandbox environment for the study of collective behavior. Each headset is equipped with a Raspberry Pi Zero, individually-addressable LEDs; a Real-Time Clock module; and a pilot light for motion tracking.
Quantifying collective behavior
The central tracking system is built with a Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera and Raspberry Pi 4. The system extracts player trajectories with computer vision, computes an emergence value in real time and sends the parameter to the headsets which adjust the blinking behavior. The more emergent the group, the more synchronous the blinking of the LEDs
Synch.Live boosts connectedness
We staged three days of public pilots at two science festivals in June 2022, at Imperial College London and Queen Mary University of London. We demonstrated that groups of people can coordinate non-verbally to solve a group task using a collective feedback mechanism. More than half of the groups emerged successfully. The data showed that connectedness to others was higher in successfully emerging groups.
