Experimental Study on the Interaction Mechanism of Cross-Walking Pedestrians

In the field of pedestrian dynamics, the interaction mechanism among pedestrians is significant for both system modelling and evacuation designing. In this study, a cross-walking experiment is conducted in two crossed passageways to investigate the microscopic interactions between individuals. Trajectories of 51 groups of pedestrians’ movements are extracted by means of image processing. Four main behaviours, i.e. accelerating, decelerating, detour and keep-walking, are identified when pedestrians walk crosswise. The pair velocities before and after the cross point are also calculated and classified to three modes: the first mode is one accelerating with the conflicting partner decelerating, the second mode is accelerating together or decelerating together, and the third mode is one keeping speed with the conflicting partner accelerating or decelerating. It is found that to avoid conflict, 90.2 % of participants take accelerated behaviour or decelerated behaviour and only 5.9 % of participants take detour behaviour, which implies pedestrians prefer to adjust their speeds rather than change their directions when facing potential conflict. Particularly, 64.7 % of groups of pedestrian avoid the conflict through the coordination mode, i.e. one accelerating with the other decelerating, which indicates the major self-organized behaviour of pedestrian. Two kinds of detour behaviour are also observed from the experiment: detouring ahead the conflicting partner and detouring behind the conflicting partner. It is found the detour ahead the conflicting pedestrian would induce an approximate lateral movement of 0.65–0.75 m, larger than that of 0.55 m when detouring behind the conflicting pedestrian. It is hoped that this study would provide some useful experimental data or conclusions for the research field of pedestrian traffic.