Pedestrian counterflow in a floor field cellular automaton model coupled with an evolutionary game

Abstract

Abstract We study the bidirectional pedestrian flow in a straight corridor using a floor field cellular automaton model, where a game-theoretical framework is exclusively introduced to deal with conflicts that multiple pedestrians are trying to move to the same target position. The pedestrians can behave as either cooperators or defectors, depending on whether they show gentle or aggressive in face of conflicts, respectively. When competing with cooperators, a defector always obtains a relatively greater payoff, characterizing the advantage of occupying the preferred vacant cell, while a reduced payoff factor δ is introduced for mutual defection due to the possible injuries by aggressiveness. We study how the pedestrian counterflow dynamics depends on δ, the corridor width W and the anticipation floor field parameter k A. It is found that the average separation time of the pedestrians displays a resonance-like behavior as a function of δ, irrespective of the width of the corridor as long as jam does not happen. The way of dealing with conflicts has no qualitative effect on the lane formation, where the jam probability mainly depends on the parameters W and k A as well as the pedestrian density. A large value of k A means a strong tendency to avoid potential future collisions and suppress the overtaking motivation, but, at a cost, increases the average separation time of the two groups of pedestrians when the width of the corridor is not so narrow. Our results provide a meaningful perspective on the understanding of the process of lane formation and jam dissolution in the bidirectional pedestrian flow, and may shed light on designing policies to improve the efficiency of passing through.