A speed-based model for crowd simulation considering walking preferences

Abstract

To investigate the influence of the walking preferences on pedestrian movements, a modified collision-free speed model is proposed by considering the expectations of comfortable walking for a pedestrian. In the model, the walking directions of pedestrians are determined by taking human perception of comfort and preference for walking straight to their intended destinations into account. The restriction of walls in heading direction on pedestrian's walking is introduced to avoid potential collisions among pedestrians and obstacles. Model validation with respect to experimental data shows that our model performs better than the original model with regards to the trajectory's distribution and the velocity profile, and can effectively alleviate backward movements. Furthermore, the speed-density relation in corridor inferred from the new model fits the experimental data well and the model performs more accurately in simulating the flow-width relation in bottleneck scenario than the original collision-free speed model.