Trajectories and walking velocity of pedestrian walking through angled-corridors: A unidirectional scenario

Abstract

When comparing corner and straight corridor to acute- and obtuse- angled-corridors, effects of later types of corridors on the pedestrian dynamics is rarely studied. Rationally, there will be changes to the pedestrian walking behavior when approaching and walking through angled-corridor due to the turning angle. This could trigger restrictions to the flow of walkers and causing congestion near that turning angle. Hence, this study is purposely to investigate empirically the characteristics of pedestrians when walking through different angled-corridors (60°, 90° and 135°). Controlled experiment of pedestrians walking through built angled- corridors was conducted at the Multipurpose Hall of USM, involving 60 local undergraduate students. Thirty walking tasks were performed by considering different number of pedestrians (NOP: 1, 15, 30, 45 and 60). Video-based tracking of pedestrian’s trajectories walking through angled-corridors was performed and effects on walking characteristics and velocity were discussed. It is found that, pedestrian not necessarily choose the shortest path while walking, but prefer to occupy all space available to suit their own speed and comfort. As the degree of corridor increases, the impacts to pedestrian walking velocity become less. However, in response to the increase in number of pedestrians, the development of changing track can be witnessed.

The influence of weather and temperature on pedestrian walking characteristics on the zigzag bridge

“…As a result, fewer pedestrians choose Track 1 than that on sunny and cloudy days. This confirms the conclusions of Rahman et al ( 2019 ). Pedestrians do not necessarily choose the shortest path when walking.…”

“…Because the overall number of tourists is relatively large, Tracks 2 and 3 are fully occupied under these weather conditions. Pedestrians prefer to use the available space to adapt their speed for the purpose of comfort (Rahman et al 2019 ), so more pedestrians choose Track 1 to avoid congestion during and after turning motion on sunny and cloudy days. The number of tourists is small, so the aisles would not be congested on rainy days.…”

“…Gorrini et al ( 2013 ) empirically investigated the impact of angled corridors on orderly crowd egress flows and highlighted the importance of turning movements of a crowd during evacuations. Rahman et al ( 2018 ; 2019 ) empirically studied the characteristics of pedestrians when walking through different angled corridors. It was found that the dimensional of a corridor (i.e., widths and angles) influence the movement speed of pedestrians.…”

Pedestrian flow characteristics through different angled bends: Exploring the spatial variation of velocity

“…Numerous studies have investigated the different aspects of crowd dynamics using empirical methods [ 5 , 12 ]. Different geometrical and architectural configurations with different level of complexities, e.g., exits and entrances [ 13 – 17 ], straight corridors [ 18 – 20 ], crossing [ 21 – 25 ], merging [ 26 – 30 ], and turning [ 31 – 34 ] configurations, have been explored in such previous studies using controlled experiments conducted with human subjects. Not only humans, but non-human biological entities, e.g., ants, have also been used to explore the evacuation performance of different geometrical settings under panic conditions [ 35 – 37 ].…”

Crowd Evacuation through Crossing Configurations: Effect of Crossing Angles and Walking Speeds on Speed Variation and Evacuation Time

“…Collision avoidance with moving obstacles in the case of intersecting streams of pedestrians requires stopping or steering maneuvers, both of which affect the individual pedestrian speed considerably [13]. Numerous experimental studies have been conducted for common geometrical settings, e.g., turning [14][15][16][17], crossing [6,18,19], and merging [14,[20][21][22] configurations, under normal, as well as evacuation, conditions. Some studies have been conducted under panic conditions using insects [10,11,23,24] and animals [25][26][27].…”