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We previously reported an experiment in which covert or explicit leaders (confederates) were placed in a group of walking pedestrians in order to test leader influence on human crowd motion. Here we simulate the participant trajectories with variants of an empirical pedestrian model, treating the covert leaders’ motion as input, and test model agreement with the experimental data. We are currently using reconstructed influence networks [2] to modify the model weights in order to simulate the influence of explicit leaders. The results help us to understand how leader influence propagates via local interactions in real human crowds.
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The Influence of Explicit and Covert Leaders on Human Crowd Motion
Previous research has suggested that some positions in human crowds are more influential than others. The present study aims to manipulate the influence networks in real human crowds by specifying the causal relationship among some pedestrians. We strategically placed covert or explicit leaders (confederates) in a group of walking pedestrians, instructed them to change walking direction (heading) on a signal, and tested their influence on collective motion. We reconstructed visual influence networks from video data and analyzed the effect of these leaders on the movements of other pedestrians. Our results suggest that both covert and explicit leaders in influential positions can steer and split a crowd, but explicit leaders change the network topology and are significantly more influential than their covert counterparts. The results have potential applications to directing emergency evacuations.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1849446
- PAR ID:
- 10652783
- Editor(s):
- Nicolas, A; Bain, N; Douin, A; Ramos, O; Furno, A
- Publisher / Repository:
- edp sciences
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- EPJ Web of Conferences: Traffic and Granular Flow 2024
- Volume:
- 334
- ISSN:
- 2100-014X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 04010
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202533404010
