Mobile Robot Navigation Considering How to Move with a Group of Pedestrians in a Crosswalk

In this paper, we propose an autonomous mobile robot navigation system that considers pedestrian flow in a crosswalk. In recent years, autonomous mobile robots have been required to be introduced into the real world. Such a robot is required to move efficiently, but more than that, it is required to avoid pedestrians and obstacles safely. On a normal sidewalk, if there is a risk of a collision with a pedestrian, the mobile robot can wait until this danger is gone. However, at crosswalks, there is a risk of collision with pedestrians due to multiple pedestrians coming and going, furthermore there is a time constraint of having to cross while the signal is green. Therefore, conventional mobile robot navigation methods cannot be used in this situation. On the other hand, the pedestrians move in the direction of each other in response to each other's movements, and this walking way enables a large number of people to pass through the crosswalk in a very short period of time, when the signal is green. Therefore, this study analyzes the movement of pedestrians passing through the crosswalk in a group, and investigates a mechanism for the generation of pedestrian flow on the crosswalk. Furthermore, we propose a mobile robot navigation method that can both avoid the risk of collisions with pedestrians and pass through crosswalks while the signal is green, using an algorithm to guide a mobile robot along the pedestrian flow that we investigated.