Analysis and Prediction of Pedestrian Crosswalk Behavior during Automated Vehicle Interactions

Abstract

For safe navigation around pedestrians, automated vehicles (AVs) need to plan their motion by accurately predicting pedestrians’ trajectories over long time horizons. Current approaches to AV motion planning around crosswalks predict only for short time horizons (1-2 s) and are based on data from pedestrian interactions with human-driven vehicles (HDVs). In this paper, we develop a hybrid systems model that uses pedestrians’ gap acceptance behavior and constant velocity dynamics for long-term pedestrian trajectory prediction when interacting with AVs. Results demonstrate the applicability of the model for long-term (> 5 s) pedestrian trajectory prediction at crosswalks. Further, we compared measures of pedestrian crossing behaviors in the immersive virtual environment (when interacting with AVs) to that in the real world (results of published studies of pedestrians interacting with HDVs), and found similarities between the two. These similarities demonstrate the applicability of the hybrid model of AV interactions developed from an immersive virtual environment (IVE) for real-world scenarios for both AVs and HDVs.Toyota Research Institute (TRI) provided funds to assist the authors with their research, but this article solely reflects the opinions and conclusions of its authors and not TRI or any other Toyota entity. The work was also supported in part by the National Science Foundation and supported in part by the Automotive Research Center at the University of Michigan, with funding from government contract Department of the Army W56HZV- 14-2-0001 through the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development, and Engineering Center (TARDEC).Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154053/1/ICRA_2020_Analysis_and_Prediction_of_Pedestrian_Final_revised_03_03_20.pdfDescription of ICRA_2020_Analysis_and_Prediction_of_Pedestrian_Final_revised_03_03_20.pdf : Main fil