Gait analysis and avoidance mechanism of pedestrians under the quantitative control of visibility

Abstract

To investigate the gait characteristics and avoidance mechanism of pedestrians under limited visibilities, a novel method is proposed to realise the quantitative control of visibility conditions. A series of experimental scenarios, including free movement, obstacle avoidance and head-on avoidance, were conducted at various visibility levels. Based on the extracted trajectories, gait parameters, including step width, step length and step time, are measured by using the automatic extraction method. The relations between visibility distance, gait parameters and walking speed are analysed. Furthermore, the obstacle avoidance process, represented by the start point, mid-point and end-point under limited visibilities, is investigated. The minimum distance between two individuals moving in opposite directions is also discussed. Finally, the right-side avoidance preference of individuals is found during the avoidance process. The study is helpful for understanding how humans adjust their movement when confronting different situations in limited visibility environments.

KEYWORDS:

• Pedestrian experiment
• limited visibility
• gait characteristics
• avoidance behaviour

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 72001095], China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [grant number 2020M681507], Opening Fund of State Key Laboratory of Fire Science (SKLFS) [grant number HZ2021-KF03] and the Humanities and Social Science Youth Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China [grant number 21YJCZH180].