title: Simulating and evaluating the local behavior of small pedestrian groups.
abstract: Recent advancements in local methods have significantly improved the collision avoidance behavior of virtual characters. However, existing methods fail to take into account that in real life pedestrians tend to walk in small groups, consisting mainly of pairs or triples of individuals. We present a novel approach to simulate the walking behavior of such small groups. Our model describes how group members interact with each other, with other groups and individuals. We highlight the potential of our method through a wide range of test-case scenarios. We evaluate the results from our simulations using a number of quantitative quality metrics, and also provide visual and numerical comparisons with video footages of real crowds.
authors.affiliation: Department of Information and Computing Sciences, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands. ioannis@cs.uu.nl
authors.forename: Ioannis
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Karamouzas
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Overmars
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003196:Computer Graphics; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D016138:Walking / Q000502:physiology*