Cyber-Physical Modeling and Control of Crowd of Pedestrians: A Review and New Framework

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent methods for modeling and controlling pedestrian crowds, introduces a new cyber-physical framework, and discusses the potential of fractional calculus for improved modeling accuracy.

Contribution

It presents a novel cyber-physical control framework for pedestrian crowds and explores fractional calculus applications in crowd modeling.

Findings

Fractional calculus offers promising modeling capabilities for crowd dynamics.

A cyber-physical control system using networked Segways effectively manages crowd flow.

Verification platform for theoretical models is established.

Abstract

Recent advances in modeling and control of crowds of pedestrians are briefly surveyed in this paper. Possibilities of applying fractional calculus in the modeling of crowd of pedestrians have been shortly reviewed and discussed from different aspects such as descriptions of motion, interactions of long range and effects of memory. Control of the crowd of pedestrians have also been formulated using the framework of Cyber-Physical Systems and been realized using networked Segways with onboard emergency response personnels to regulate the velocity and flux of the crowd. Platform for verification of the theoretical results are also provided in this paper.