Experimental characterization of collision avoidance in pedestrian dynamics

DANIEL R. PARISI; PABLO A. NEGRI; LUCIANA BRUNO

PHYSICAL REVIEW E - STATISTICAL PHYSICS, PLASMAS, FLUIDS AND RELATED INTERDISCIPLINARY TOPICS

APS

Año: 2016

1063-651X

13 In the present work, the avoidance behavior of pedestrians was characterized by controlled ex-14 periments. Several conflict situations were studied considering different flow rates and group sizes15 in crossing and head-on configurations. Pedestrians were recorded from above, and individual 2D16 trajectories of their displacement were recovered after image processing. Lateral swaying amplitude17 and step lengths were measured for free pedestrians, obtaining similar values to the ones reported18 in the literature. Minimum avoidance distances were computed in two-pedestrian experiments.19 In the case of one pedestrian dodging an arrested one, the avoidance distance did not depend on20 the relative orientation of the still pedestrian with respect to the direction of motion of the first.21 When both pedestrians were moving, the avoidance distance in a perpendicular encounter was22 longer than the one obtained during a head-on approach. It was found that the mean curvature of23 trajectories was linearly anticorrelated with the mean speed. Furthermore, two common avoidance24 maneuvers, stopping and steering, were defined from the analysis of the acceleration and curvature25 in single trajectories. Interestingly, it was more probable to observe steering events than stopping26 ones; also, the probability of simultaneous steering and stopping occurrences was negligible. The27 results obtained in this work can be used to validate and calibrate pedestrian dynamics models.