Understanding Pedestrian Movement Using Urban Sensing Technologies: The Promise of Audio-based Sensors

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of audio-based sensors for monitoring pedestrian movement in urban areas, highlighting benefits, limitations, and applications for urban planning.

Contribution

It introduces a novel audio sensing approach for pedestrian monitoring, presents a large dataset, and demonstrates trajectory prediction capabilities.

Findings

Audio sensors show promise for pedestrian tracking

The ASPED dataset enables new analysis of pedestrian flows

Audio-based sensing can support urban planning decisions

Abstract

While various sensors have been deployed to monitor vehicular flows, sensing pedestrian movement is still nascent. Yet walking is a significant mode of travel in many cities, especially those in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Understanding pedestrian volumes and flows is essential for designing safer and more attractive pedestrian infrastructure and for controlling periodic overcrowding. This study discusses a new approach to scale up urban sensing of people with the help of novel audio-based technology. It assesses the benefits and limitations of microphone-based sensors as compared to other forms of pedestrian sensing. A large-scale dataset called ASPED is presented, which includes high-quality audio recordings along with video recordings used for labeling the pedestrian count data. The baseline analyses highlight the promise of using audio sensors for pedestrian tracking, although algorithmic and technological improvements to make the sensors practically usable continue. This study also demonstrates how the data can be leveraged to predict pedestrian trajectories. Finally, it discusses the use cases and scenarios where audio-based pedestrian sensing can support better urban and transportation planning.