A large-scale real-life crowd steering experiment via arrow-like stimuli

Authors

  • Alessandro Corbetta Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
  • Werner Kroneman Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
  • Maurice Donners Philips Lighting, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
  • Antal Haans Human Technology Interaction, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
  • Philip Ross Studio Philip Ross, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
  • Marius Trouwborst Philips Lighting, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
  • Sander Van de Wijdeven Philips Lighting, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
  • Martijn Hultermans Philips Lighting, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
  • Dragan Sekulovski Philips Lighting, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
  • Fedosja van der Heijden Philips Lighting, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
  • Sjoerd Mentink Philips Lighting, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
  • Federico Toschi Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17815/CD.2020.34

Keywords:

Steering pedestrian dynamics, crowd management, high-statistics measurements

Abstract

We introduce “Moving Light”: an unprecedented real-life crowd steering experiment that involved about 140.000 participants among the visitors of the Glow 2017 Light Festival (Eindhoven, NL). Moving Light targets one outstanding question of paramount societal and technological importance: “can we seamlessly and systematically influence routing decisions in pedestrian crowds?” Establishing effective crowd steering methods is extremely relevant in the context of crowd management, e.g. when it comes to keeping floor usage within safety limits (e.g. during public events with high attendance) or at designated comfort levels (e.g. in leisure areas). In the Moving Light setup, visitors walking in a corridor face a choice between two symmetric exits defined by a large central obstacle. Stimuli, such as arrows, alternate at random and perturb the symmetry of the environment to bias choices. While visitors move in the experiment, they are tracked with high space and time resolution, such that the efficiency of each stimulus at steering individual routing decisions can be accurately evaluated a posteriori. In this contribution, we first describe the measurement concept in the Moving Light experiment and then we investigate quantitatively the steering capability of arrow indications.

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Published

27.03.2020

How to Cite

Corbetta, A., Kroneman, W., Donners, M., Haans, A., Ross, P., Trouwborst, M., … Toschi, F. (2020). A large-scale real-life crowd steering experiment via arrow-like stimuli. Collective Dynamics, 5, 61–68. https://doi.org/10.17815/CD.2020.34

Issue

Vol. 5 (2020)

Section

Proceedings of Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics 2018

License

Copyright (c) 2020 Alessandro Corbetta, Werner Kroneman, Maurice Donners, Antal Haans, Philip Ross, Marius Trouwborst, Sander Van de Wijdeven, Martijn Hultermans, Dragan Sekulovski, Fedosja van der Heijden, Sjoerd Mentink, Federico Toschi

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