The Downtown Üsküdar Study

When sensory information is uncertain or surprising, autonomous machines often fail, with sometimes fatal consequences.  By contrast, humans and animals can adapt to sensory uncertainty or surprises, at least when they are healthy and/or sensorily unimpaired.  Therefore, the goal of iNavigate is to infer the principles of surprise-based navigation from biological systems, specifically, humans, rodents, and fish, and to translate these principles into algorithms that can be implemented and tested in mobile robots and bionic devices, thereby providing novel technological solutions for autonomous robotic mobility.

To study the ways that humans adapt to sensory uncertainty during navigation, consortium members Boğaziçi University (Assoc. Prof. Dr. Daniela Schulz; M.Sc. cand. Yiğit Aydoğan, M.Sc. cand. Berrah Haleem; Ph.D. cand. Mete Özgün), Aberystwyth University (Secondees Assoc. Prof. Dr. Otar Akanyeti, Dr. Federico Villagra Povina, Ph.D. cand. Kardelen Oya Temiz) and Acrome Robotics (Host Candan Caner, M.Sc.; Parsa Eskandari Payandeh, B.Sc.) designed a human study termed ‘The Downtown Üsküdar Study’ or DÜS – named after the location in Istanbul where data collection is taking place – with the goal to extract the best predictors of successful navigation in a real-world environment that harbors sensory uncertainty.  We have collected behavioral data from 27/120 participants so far.  Preliminary analyses revealed gender differences in crowd navigation, with implications for the design of robots (simulating female or male biology). 

Haleem, B.A., Aydoğan, Y., Sever, F.Z., Alomar, A., Temiz, K.O., Akanyeti, O., Schulz, D. (2025).  Gender differences in crowd navigation.  International Symposium on Brain and Cognitive Science – Istanbul, Turkey.

We will make our data available at https://zenodo.org/communities/inavigate.