Properties of pedestrians walking in line - Fundamental diagrams

TL;DR

This study uses high-precision motion capture to analyze pedestrian flow in a line, revealing a piecewise linear relationship between velocity and headway with three distinct behavioral regimes, enhancing understanding of pedestrian dynamics.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the velocity-headway relation is piecewise linear with three regimes, expanding previous linear models to cover larger density ranges.

Findings

Three distinct regimes in pedestrian behavior identified

Transitions occur at approximately 1.1 m and 3 m headways

Data supports piecewise linear velocity-headway relationship

Abstract

We present experimental results obtained for a one-dimensional flow using high precision motion capture. The full pedestrians' trajectories are obtained. In this paper, we focus on the fundamental diagram, and on the relation between the instantaneous velocity and spatial headway (distance to the predecessor). While the latter was found to be linear in previous experiments, we show that it is rather a piecewise linear behavior which is found if larger density ranges are covered. Indeed, our data clearly exhibits three distinct regimes in the behavior of pedestrians that follow each other. The transitions between these regimes occur at spatial headways of about 1.1 and 3 m, respectively. This finding could be useful for future modeling.