LiDAR for Crowd Management: Applications, Benefits, and Future Directions

TL;DR

This paper reviews LiDAR technology's advantages in crowd management, covering applications, challenges, and future research directions for enhancing public safety solutions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive taxonomy of crowd management tasks using LiDAR and discusses open challenges and future research avenues.

Findings

LiDAR offers privacy-preserving crowd monitoring solutions.

Effective LiDAR applications exist for detection, counting, tracking, and behavior analysis.

Key challenges include dataset scarcity and sensor fusion requirements.

Abstract

Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology offers significant advantages for effective crowd management. This article presents LiDAR technology and highlights its primary advantages over other monitoring technologies, including enhanced privacy, performance in various weather conditions, and precise 3D mapping. We present a general taxonomy of four key tasks in crowd management: crowd detection, counting, tracking, and behavior classification, with illustrative examples of LiDAR applications for each task. We identify challenges and open research directions, including the scarcity of dedicated datasets, sensor fusion requirements, artificial intelligence integration, and processing needs for LiDAR point clouds. This article offers actionable insights for developing crowd management solutions tailored to public safety applications.