Human swarm experiment: (a) Groups of 10 to 20 participants were asked to walk around a large hall, turning left and right while staying together as a group. Their head positions were recorded using 16 motion capture cameras (b) Head trajectories were reconstructed using computer software. The visual model predicted the trajectories of individual participants, using the visual movements of their neighbors as input. Credit: William Warren
Human crowd dynamics are best predicted by the visual neighborhood model, based on the visual domains of each person in the crowd. Birds, schools of fish, and crowds of people also move in the group movement pattern. Understanding crowd behavior can be helpful in preventing jams, crushes, and stampedes. Mathematical models of group motion are usually based on characterizing local interactions between individuals.
One common approach, called the metric model, is to quantify the forces of attraction and repulsion and velocity alignment of all neighbors within a fixed radius of a focal individual. Alternatively, in the topological model, the focal individual may be affected by a fixed number of nearby neighbors, regardless of the distance to the focal person.
for their study published in PNAS NexusTrenton Wirth and his colleagues asked participants to walk through real and virtual crowds of varying density, then change the walking direction of some neighbors to see how the participants responded. The authors found that the data produced was better predicted by the metric model than by the topological model.
But the best model was based on the visual movements of neighbors that the focal individual could see. In dense crowds, near neighbors may partially or completely block the view of distant neighbors, removing distant neighbors from focal pedestrian input. The pursuit of a visual model is a more realistic simulation of crowd dynamics, according to the authors.
more information:
Trenton de Wirth et al., Is the neighborhood of interaction in human crowds metric, topological, or visual?, PNAS Nexus (2023). DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad118
the quoteHuman Crowds: Best Model of Human Crowds is “The Visible Neighborhood” (2023, May 17), Retrieved May 17, 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2023-05-human-crowds-visual-neictures.html
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