Static force field representation of environments based on agents nonlinear motions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method for incrementally modeling environmental attractive forces affecting agent motion, using velocity fields and dynamic maps, evaluated on synthetic and real pedestrian data.

Contribution

It proposes a novel parametric and switching model for representing attractive environmental areas influencing agent dynamics.

Findings

Effective in modeling attractive forces in synthetic environments

Successfully applied to real pedestrian trajectory data

Provides online updates of environmental influence maps

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology that aims at the incremental representation of areas inside environments in terms of attractive forces. It is proposed a parametric representation of velocity fields ruling the dynamics of moving agents. It is assumed that attractive spots in the environment are responsible for modifying the motion of agents. A switching model is used to describe near and far velocity fields, which in turn are used to learn attractive characteristics of environments. The effect of such areas is considered radial over all the scene. Based on the estimation of attractive areas, a map that describes their effects in terms of their localizations, ranges of action, and intensities is derived in an online way. Information of static attractive areas is added dynamically into a set of filters that describes possible interactions between moving agents and an environment. The proposed approach is first evaluated on synthetic data; posteriorly, the method is applied on real trajectories coming from moving pedestrians in an indoor environment.