2009 International Conference on Measuring Technology and Mechatronics Automation

An Improved Cellular Automaton Model for Urban Walkway Bi-directional Pedestrian

Flow

WANG Tao

CHEN Jun

Master Student of School of Transportation

Southeast University
Nanjing, P. R. China
e-mail: vlintao@yahoo.com.cn

Professor
Southeast University
Nanjing, P. R. China
e-mail: chenjun@seu.edu.cn

AbstractIn order to describe traffic operation characteristics

of bi-directional pedestrian flow in urban pedestrian walkways
and work for walking safe, authors proposed an improved
cellular automaton bi-directional pedestrian flow model. This
model takes into account many basic pedestrian behaviors,
forward move, side stepping, position exchange, lateral-move
and step back, and, using MOORE Neighborhood method,
provides rules of pedestrian movement combining with the
characteristics of walking process , for instance, intelligent,
flexible and complicated. With computer simulation, authors
studied the influence of position exchange and lateral-move on
the model, the parameters of bi-directional pedestrian flow
such as velocity and volume were discussed also. The results
demonstrated that position exchange and lateral-move make
the pedestrian behavior more comprehensive; the model could
be better applied to simulate the high-density bi-directional
pedestrian flow and provided reasonable traffic operation
parameters of bi-directional pedestrian flow.
Keywords- bi-directional pedestrian flow; cellular automaton;
position exchange; lateral-move; computer simulation

I.

II.

INTRODUCTION

Working is the basic travel mode of human being, it is

also one of the main travel modes of townsman and occupies
an important position of urban traffic in our country.
Working has low-powerwasting, low pollution, low-cost,
high-reach, high-inclusive, and other characteristics, so the
orderly and healthy development of working traffic system is
the important content for advancing service level of urban
traffic system and the embodiment of people-oriented
ideology. Establishing cellular automaton model of bidirectional pedestrian flow could capture traffic operation
parameters of bi-directional pedestrian flow conveniently
and better understand working, has important theoretical and
practical significances.
The time, space and variables of Cellular Automaton (CA)
model are discrete, CA is the effective technique for
simulating complex behavior [1][2]. In recent years, CA has
emerged as an effective technique for modeling traffic flow
and network. At present, there are two main ideas to study
pedestrian movement: the social force model considering
the force of the pedestrian and environment[3][4]; the
rule model based on vehicle model[5][6]. The social force
model is difficult to operate and social force is complex to

978-0-7695-3583-8/09 $25.00 2009 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/ICMTMA.2009.252

determine; the rule model based on vehicle cant reflect

the actual behavior of pedestrians. In addition, the reference
[7] simulated the self-organized and critical phenomena of
two-dimensional pedestrian movement using MOORE
neighborhood method. W.G Weng studied the phase-change
and spot drawing of pedestrian counter flow with different
directional splits [8]. However, those models didnt consider
the common behaviors of pedestrian comprehensively and
are difficult to simulate high-density pedestrian flow, at the
same time, they all research on escaped population, and the
common bi-directional pedestrian flow wasnt involved.
This paper took into account many basic pedestrian
behaviors, position exchange, lateral-move and step back,
and, using MOORE neighborhood method, provided rules of
pedestrian movement and proposed CA model of bidirectional pedestrian flow of urban pedestrian walkways.
With computer simulation, authors studied the influence of
position exchange and lateral-move on the model, and the
parameters of bi-directional pedestrian flow such as velocity
and volume were discussed also.

458

ESTABLISH CA MODEL OF BI-DIRECTIONAL

MEDESTRIAN MLOW

Bi-directional pedestrian flow is an interacting and

complex impellent system. Compared with mobile flow, it is
more intelligent, flexible and complicated. Yet, with CA
model and some certain simple rules of pedestrian behavior,
we could establish bi-directional pedestrian flow model. This
model makes up of two parts, bi-directional pedestrian flow
environment and rules of pedestrian behavior.
A. Bi-directional pedestrian flow environment
The model studied closed bi-directional walkway. As the
study of reference [5], a circular lattice of size10 u 1000 with
square cells at 0.475 m per side is used (occupying a
minimum area of 0 . 21 m 2 ). The working speeds of entities
assigned to the lattice are randomly distributed (5% fast
4 cells / s , 90% standard 3 cells / s , 5% slow 2 cells / s ), as
Fig. 1 illustrates. U is density, M rl is directional splits.
Position exchange refers to the manner in which
pedestrians approaching each other from opposite directions
manage to avoid a head-on deadlock, modeled by swapping
the position of opposing pedestrians with some random

Head right 2 cells/s

Head right 3 cells/s
Head right 4 cells/s

Head left 2 cells/s

Head left 4 cells /s

Head left 3 cells/s

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of pedestrian move of bi-directional pedestrian walkway

1) Forward move: pedestrian move forward when the

lattice in front of him is empty.
2) Position exchange: pedestrian swap the position of
p
opposing pedestrians with probability exchg when they
approaching each other from opposite direction. If they
exchange unsuccessful, invoke next step.
3) Lateral move: according to pedestrians working on
right side, they tend to outstrip from left when they
encounter the pedestrians in the same direction, on the
contrary, they tend to outstrip from right.

probability, denoted as p exchg . Pedestrians could lateralmove with some random probability when they encounter
pedestrians denoted as p s , and the speed is
2 times of
the speed of the original because they are diagonal
movement. Pedestrians could step back with random
probability p b .
For CA, the state of each cell dependent on the state of its
neighborhood. This paper used MOORE neighborhood
method that the state of cell in next time step is decided by
the state of its neighborhood in this time step.Pedestrian
movement rules
The state of each cell is parallel updates, there are two
problems to be solved at one time step: position chose for
next update; the collision when more than one pedestrian
chose the same lattice. The paper taking the pedestrian with
speed v1 who head right for example provided rules of
pedestrian movement, as Fig. 2, 3 illustrate (the black lattice
mean a pedestrian with speed v2 )

pw

Figure 2.

a) Encounter pedestrians walking to right and v1 ! v 2 .

For Fig. 2(a), pedestrian move to lateral head with
probability p s1 , splits of left and right is T ; For Fig. 2(b),
pedestrian
move
to
right
lateral
head
with
probability D p s1 ; For Fig. 2(c), pedestrian move to left
lateral head with probability p s 1 .

pw

pw

pw

The possible configuration of lateral-moving for the pedestrians walking to the right

pl

pl

pw

pw

pr

pr

pw

pb

pw

Figure 3. The possible configuration of side stepping for the pedestrians walking to the right

459

b) Encounter pedestrians walking to left. For Fig. 2(a),

pedestrian move to lateral head with probability p s 2 , splits

of left and right is V ;For Fig. 2(b), pedestrian move to right

lateral head with probability p s 2 ; For Fig. 2(c), pedestrian
move to left lateral head with probability E ps 2 . If they are
unsuccessful, invoke next step.
III.

COMPUTER SIMULATION AND ANALYSIS

Simulations are performed for 10000 time-steps at

periodical boundary condition. Paper takes the last 4000 as
result. Density, U , is the proportion of occupied cell.
Volume is the number of pedestrians who leaved the
boundary. For statistical accuracy, 20 replications at each
simulation were run and the fundamental parameters were
computed as the average over these replications.
Paper gives parameters of model as follows:
ps1 0.8 , p s 2 0.7 , D E 0.2 , p w31 0.9 , T V 80 / 20 ,
p b 31 0 .1 ; p l11 0.4 , pr11 0.1 , p w11 0.5 ; p l12 0.25 ,

p r12
p w14
pl 21

p l 23

0.25 , p w12
0.8 ; p l15
0.1 , pr 21
0.2 , pw 23

0.5 ; p r13 0.5 , p w13 0.5 ; p r 14

0.9 , p w15 0.1 ; p l16 0.5 , p w16
0.4 , p w 21 0.5 ; pr 22 0.5 , pw 22
0 .8 .

Figure 5. The lateral-move impact of velocity

Fig. 5 shows the velocity density curve

at pexchg 0.5 U 0 .5 . Introducing lateral movement
improves average velocity of 13% at low density; however,
it isnt very helpful in improving speed at high density. This
is because as density increases there are proportionate
decreases in opportunities for lateral move.

0 .2 ,
0 .5 ;

B. The parameters of bi-directional pedestrian flow

Fig. 6 is velocitydensity curve at pexchg

0.5 ;

0.5 ; Fig. 7 is

volumedensity curve, at Mrl 70/ 30. From the results can be

seen the parameters of bi-directional pedestrian flow given
by this model have some characteristics as follows:
1) The velocitydensity curve is nearly linear at low
density, but there are catastrophic changes in performance at
density around 0.35 0.4, this is because the obstruction
appear and the free motion is destroyed. Speed become
stabilizing again when density more than 0.45, because
pedestrians can exchange position. In this case Fig. 5(b) can
be seen also.
2) The velocity and volume of bi-directional pedestrian
flow are higher than unidirectional pedestrian flow at very
high density. This may seem counterintuitive, but is easily
explained. This is because as density increases there are
proportionate increases in opportunities for position
exchange.

A. Simulations of position exchange and lateral-move

Fig. 4 depicts results of simulation experiment for
different p exchg , when U 0.5 , Mrl 70/30. Velocity falls off
quickly to zero, when p exchg
0 and the model appeared
complete obstruction after 3000 time-step. With
p exchg increased to 0.5, pedestrians can work at stable speed,
and the speed has increased also. The results showed that
introducing position exchange makes model can run stably at
higher density, it enhances the ability of simulating high
density bi-directional pedestrian flow.

Figure 4. . Average velocity change of bi-directional pedestrian flow with

time step for different p
exchg

Figure 6. Velocity-density curve of bi-directional pedestrian flow for

different M rl

460

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research is supported by the National High
Technology Research and Development Program
("863"Program) of China (2008AA11Z201) and Key
Projects in the National Science & Technology Pillar
Program during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan Period
(2006BAJ18B01).
REFERENCES
[1]

S. Wolfram. Cellular Automata as models of complexity. Nature

1984, 311,419-424.
[2] S. Wolfram, A new kind of science. Champaign Illinois: Wolfram
Media, 2002
[3] D. Helbing, P. Molnr. Social force model for pedestrian dynamics.
Phys. Rev. E. 1995, 51: 4282 - 4286.
[4] D. Helbing, L. Farkas, T. Vicsek. Simulating dynamical features of
escape panic. Nature, 2000, 407(28):487-490.
[5] V.J. Blue, J.L. Adler. Cellular automata micro-simulation for
modeling bi-directional pedestrian walkways. Transportation
Research Part B, 2001 35:293-312.
[6] M. Muramatsu, T. Irie, T. Nagatani. Jamming transition in pedestrian
counter flow. Phys A, 1999, 267-487.
[7] L.Z. Yang, W.F. Fang. Cellular Automata model of pedestrian
movement considering the personnel behavior. Chin. Sic. Bull. 2003,
111143-1147.
[8] W.G Weng, T. Chen, H.Y. Yuan, W.C. Fan. Cellular automaton
simulation of pedestrian counter flow with different walk velocities.
Phys. Rev. E. 2006, 74,036102.
[9] S. Maniccam. Adaptive decentralized congestion avoidance in twodimensional traffic. Phys A. 2006 363 512526.
[10] M. Wolki, A. Schadschneider, M. Schreckenberg. Asymmetric
exclusion processes with shuffled dynamics . J. Phys. A. 2006, 39, 33.
[11] W.G. Weng, S.F. Shen, H.Y. Yuan and W.C. Fan. A behavior-based
model for pedestrian counter flow [J] .Phys A. 2007, 375 668-678.
[12] R. Jiang. Pedestrian behaviors in a lattice gas model with large
maximum velocity [J]. Phys A. 2007, 373 683-693.

Figure 7. Volume-density curve of bi-directional pedestrian flow for

different p exchg

IV.

CONCLUSION

The results showed that introducing position exchange

enhances the model ability of simulating high density bidirectional pedestrian flow and increased speed also.
Introducing lateral movement improves average velocity at
low density; however, it isnt very helpful in improving
speed at high density. The mode produces reasonable
parameters of speed, flow taking into account position
exchange and lateral move. This improved model can
simulate bi-directional pedestrian flow very well. Although
some parameter values of model are given based on
experiences, the changes in values will not change the nature
of the model, and will not affect above conclusion.
In fact, pedestrian movement is very intelligent, complex.
Although the behaviors and rules of this model consider
these characteristics relative comprehensively, it needs
correction and improving according to the research and data.
What is certain is that this model will not only help us to
understand the bi-directional pedestrian flow, but also work
for walking.

461