Investigating Cultural Aspects in the Fundamental Diagram using Convolutional Neural Networks and Simulation

TL;DR

This study uses CNNs and Voronoi diagrams to analyze cultural differences in personal space in pedestrian flow, comparing Brazil and Germany, and introduces a simulation method based on psychological traits.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach combining CNN-based detection, Voronoi analysis, and psychological modeling to study cultural differences in pedestrian behavior and simulate experiments across countries.

Findings

People behave more similarly in high-density crowds across cultures.

Personal space varies more in low and medium densities between cultures.

The simulation method based on OCEAN traits produces culturally consistent results.

Abstract

This paper presents a study regarding group behavior in a controlled experiment focused on differences in an important attribute that vary across cultures -- the personal spaces -- in two Countries: Brazil and Germany. In order to coherently compare Germany and Brazil evolutions with same population applying same task, we performed the pedestrian Fundamental Diagram experiment in Brazil, as performed in Germany. We use CNNs to detect and track people in video sequences. With this data, we use Voronoi Diagrams to find out the neighbor relation among people and then compute the walking distances to find out the personal spaces. Based on personal spaces analyses, we found out that people behavior is more similar, in terms of their behaviours, in high dense populations and vary more in low and medium densities. So, we focused our study on cultural differences between the two Countries in low and medium densities. Results indicate that personal space analyses can be a relevant feature in order to understand cultural aspects in video sequences. In addition to the cultural differences, we also investigate the personality model in crowds, using OCEAN. We also proposed a way to simulate the FD experiment from other countries using the OCEAN psychological traits model as input. The simulated countries were consistent with the literature.