Abstract
Marker-less video-based pose estimation promises to allow us to do movement science on existing video databases. We revisited the old question of how people synchronize their walking using real world data. We thus applied pose estimation to 348 video segments extracted from YouTube videos of people walking in cities. As in previous, more constrained, research, we find a tendency for pairs of people to walk in phase or in anti-phase with each other. Large video databases, along with pose-estimation algorithms, promise answers to many movement questions without experimentally acquiring new data.
Highlights
To successfully navigate any environment, a walker must adapt to the surface they walk on, avoid obstacles, change speed, and plan movements according to their goals [1,2]
We asked how people synchronize their movements when they walk side-by-side, by analyzing pose estimates extracted from online videos
We analyzed the relative phase and walking frequency computed from the vertical displacement between the ankles in each video
Summary
To successfully navigate any environment, a walker must adapt to the surface they walk on, avoid obstacles, change speed, and plan movements according to their goals [1,2]. Like all movement, often takes place in the context of other people. Humans, when walking, must often generate their actions according to the movements of people around them. Coordination of movements with others during everyday activities helps to achieve shared goals efficiently and fluently, for example when playing sports, moving an object together, or walking side-by-side. Evidence from laboratory experiments suggests that synchronization between people does take place when it is required by the task. There is evidence for uninstructed movement coordination from laboratory experiments where subjects are asked to perform various artificial tasks, for example, sway pendulums, sit in rocking chairs, or spontaneously move their arms [5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Coordination across individuals appears to be fairly ubiquitous, occurring even when it is not required by the task and there is no instruction to do so
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