A Hierarchical Pedestrian Behavior Model to Generate Realistic Human Behavior in Traffic Simulation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hierarchical pedestrian behavior model that combines behavior trees and social force models to generate realistic pedestrian trajectories for traffic simulation, aiding autonomous vehicle testing.

Contribution

It presents a novel hierarchical model integrating high-level decision-making with low-level motion planning, implemented within GeoScenario Server for enhanced traffic scenario simulation.

Findings

High fidelity in replicating real-world pedestrian trajectories

Decision-making accuracy of 98% or higher

Effective integration into traffic simulation environments

Abstract

Modelling pedestrian behavior is crucial in the development and testing of autonomous vehicles. In this work, we present a hierarchical pedestrian behavior model that generates high-level decisions through the use of behavior trees, in order to produce maneuvers executed by a low-level motion planner using an adapted Social Force model. A full implementation of our work is integrated into GeoScenario Server, a scenario definition and execution engine, extending its vehicle simulation capabilities with pedestrian simulation. The extended environment allows simulating test scenarios involving both vehicles and pedestrians to assist in the scenario-based testing process of autonomous vehicles. The presented hierarchical model is evaluated on two real-world data sets collected at separate locations with different road structures. Our model is shown to replicate the real-world pedestrians' trajectories with a high degree of fidelity and a decision-making accuracy of 98% or better, given only high-level routing information for each pedestrian.