Analysis of emergent patterns in crossing flows of pedestrians reveals an invariant of `stripe' formation in human data

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Hauptverfasser: Mullick, Pratik, Fontaine, Sylvain, Appert-Rolland, Cécile, Olivier, Anne-Hélène, Warren, William H., Pettré, Julien
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2021
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author Mullick, Pratik
Fontaine, Sylvain
Appert-Rolland, Cécile
Olivier, Anne-Hélène
Warren, William H.
Pettré, Julien
author_facet Mullick, Pratik
Fontaine, Sylvain
Appert-Rolland, Cécile
Olivier, Anne-Hélène
Warren, William H.
Pettré, Julien
contents When two streams of pedestrians cross at an angle, striped patterns spontaneously emerge as a result of local pedestrian interactions. This clear case of self-organized pattern formation remains to be elucidated. In counterflows, with a crossing angle of 180°, alternating lanes of traffic are commonly observed moving in opposite directions, whereas in crossing flows at an angle of 90° diagonal stripes have been reported. Naka (1977) hypothesized that stripe orientation is perpendicular to the bisector of the crossing angle. However, studies of crossing flows at acute and obtuse angles remain underdeveloped. We tested the bisector hypothesis in experiments on small groups (18-19 participants each) crossing at seven angles (30° intervals), and analyzed the geometric properties of stripes. We present two novel computational methods for analyzing striped patterns in pedestrian data: (i) an edge-cutting algorithm, which detects the dynamic formation of stripes and allows us to measure local properties of individual stripes; and (ii) a pattern-matching technique, based on the Gabor function, which allows us to estimate global properties (orientation and wavelength) of the striped pattern at a time T. We find an invariant property: stripes in the two groups are parallel and perpendicular to the bisector at all crossing angles. In contrast, other properties depend on the crossing angle: stripe spacing (wavelength), stripe size (number of pedestrians per stripe), and crossing time all decrease as the crossing angle increases from 30° to 180°, whereas the number of stripes increases with crossing angle. We also observe that the width of individual stripes is dynamically squeezed as the two groups cross each other. The findings thus support the bisector hypothesis at a wide range of crossing angles, although the theoretical reasons for this invariant remain unclear.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2111_13191
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Analysis of emergent patterns in crossing flows of pedestrians reveals an invariant of `stripe' formation in human data
Mullick, Pratik
Fontaine, Sylvain
Appert-Rolland, Cécile
Olivier, Anne-Hélène
Warren, William H.
Pettré, Julien
Physics and Society
When two streams of pedestrians cross at an angle, striped patterns spontaneously emerge as a result of local pedestrian interactions. This clear case of self-organized pattern formation remains to be elucidated. In counterflows, with a crossing angle of 180°, alternating lanes of traffic are commonly observed moving in opposite directions, whereas in crossing flows at an angle of 90° diagonal stripes have been reported. Naka (1977) hypothesized that stripe orientation is perpendicular to the bisector of the crossing angle. However, studies of crossing flows at acute and obtuse angles remain underdeveloped. We tested the bisector hypothesis in experiments on small groups (18-19 participants each) crossing at seven angles (30° intervals), and analyzed the geometric properties of stripes. We present two novel computational methods for analyzing striped patterns in pedestrian data: (i) an edge-cutting algorithm, which detects the dynamic formation of stripes and allows us to measure local properties of individual stripes; and (ii) a pattern-matching technique, based on the Gabor function, which allows us to estimate global properties (orientation and wavelength) of the striped pattern at a time T. We find an invariant property: stripes in the two groups are parallel and perpendicular to the bisector at all crossing angles. In contrast, other properties depend on the crossing angle: stripe spacing (wavelength), stripe size (number of pedestrians per stripe), and crossing time all decrease as the crossing angle increases from 30° to 180°, whereas the number of stripes increases with crossing angle. We also observe that the width of individual stripes is dynamically squeezed as the two groups cross each other. The findings thus support the bisector hypothesis at a wide range of crossing angles, although the theoretical reasons for this invariant remain unclear.
title Analysis of emergent patterns in crossing flows of pedestrians reveals an invariant of `stripe' formation in human data
topic Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.13191