Robot-assisted pedestrian regulation in an exit corridor

Abstract

Due to the faster-is-slower phenomenon in emergency escape, it is desirable to regulate pedestrian flow at the exit or a bottleneck. Modification of pedestrian facilities was previously studied to increase the efficiency and safety by the transportation community. We propose a robot-assisted pedestrian regulation scheme and study passive human-robot interaction (HRI), where the robot acts as a dynamic obstacle that interacts with pedestrians. Such a robot-assisted solution replaces expensive infrastructure modification with real-time reconfigurability. In the paper, we first formulate a robot-assisted flow optimization problem based on the social force models of pedestrian dynamics with embedded HRI forces. We then present an online learning algorithm based on adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) to generate motion control so that the robot can replan and adapt its motion to real-time pedestrian flows. The ADP control process uses observed flow information only but not the models of pedestrians, and provides feedback control with online learning and control capability. Simulation results demonstrate efficiency of the proposed method.