Using a Telepresence System to Investigate Route Choice Behavior

Abstract

A combination of a telepresence system and a microscopic traffic simulator is introduced. It is evaluated using a hotel evacuation scenario. Four different kinds of supporting information are compared, standard exit signs, floor plans with indicated exit routes, guiding lines on the floor and simulated agents leading the way. The results indicate that guiding lines are the most efficient way to support an evacuation but the natural behavior of following others comes very close. On another level the results are consistent with previously performed real and virtual experiments and validate the use of a telepresence system in evacuation studies. It is shown that using a microscopic traffic simulator extends the possibilities for evaluation, e.g. by adding simulated humans to the environment.Comment: Preprint of TGF11 (Traffic and Granular Flow, Moscow, September 2011) conference proceedings contributio

Virtual Reality for Fire Evacuation Research

“…If proven sufficiently valid, VR will be a promising route to gain objective and reliable insights in HBiF. Results from VR studies can be used to test theories of HBiF, verify and validate evacuation models [44], and be integrated into VR training measures [29,45]. Table I compares six different empirical research methods, which gather data on HBiF, on several important aspects such as the degree of experimental control, experimental setting, and the type of data that can be collected with each method.…”