Pedestrian Simulation: A Review

This article focuses on different aspects of pedestrian (crowd) modeling and simulation. The review includes: various modeling criteria, such as granularity, techniques, and factors involved in modeling pedestrian behavior, and different pedestrian simulation methods with a more detailed look at two approaches for simulating pedestrian behavior in traffic scenes. At the end, benefits and drawbacks of different simulation techniques are discussed and recommendations are made for future research. Pedestrian behavior in the context of driving can be modeled at the individual level, e.g. a pedestrian is intending to cross the road in a residential area, or as part of a crowd of individuals, e.g. a group of pedestrians is about to cross a signalized intersection. Note that the term crowd is often used in phenomenology where the behavior of large groups of people is studied in the context of municipal road design, building evacuation system planning, shopping mall structure design, and many similar applications. In traffic context, the term "pedestrian group" or group for short is often used. However, since a large body of the literature on pedestrian simulation is involving phenomenology, I use the term crowd throughout this report. Before discussing different methods of modeling pedestrian and crowd behavior, it is important to understand what constitutes a crowd.