single-rb.php

JRM Vol.37 No.6 pp. 1477-1487
doi: 10.20965/jrm.2025.p1477
(2025)

Paper:

Inducibility—Quantitative Measure of Interaction Between Pedestrians—

Hiroyuki Okuda ORCID Icon, Kentaro Sugiura, and Tatsuya Suzuki

Nagoya University
Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, Aichi 464-8603, Japan

Received:
April 23, 2025
Accepted:
September 16, 2025
Published:
December 20, 2025
Keywords:
human-machine interaction, human-machine cooperation, human-centered planning and control
Abstract

As autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are increasingly introduced into diverse environments, it is crucial that they interact smoothly and naturally with nearby pedestrians. To allow this, AMRs are expected to communicate and behave in a manner similar to interactions between humans. This study addresses pedestrian-pedestrian passing behavior and presents a novel quantitative index, termed the inducibility measure, that captures the extent to which a person’s actions can affect the behavior of those around them. Two types of inducibility measures are proposed: one derived from the sensitivity of the decision-making process, and the other from the controllability Gramian of a state-space representation of a closed-loop system representing interactive behavior. These measures were analyzed using a mathematical model of pedestrian behavior developed from actual observational data on pedestrian interactions. The proposed indices are intended to support the design and evaluation of AMR behavior, particularly in scenarios involving close interactions with humans.

Inducibility map for pedestrian

Inducibility map for pedestrian"s decision

Cite this article as:
H. Okuda, K. Sugiura, and T. Suzuki, “Inducibility—Quantitative Measure of Interaction Between Pedestrians—,” J. Robot. Mechatron., Vol.37 No.6, pp. 1477-1487, 2025.
Data files:
References
  1. [1] N. Boysen, S. Fedtke, and S. Schwerdfeger, “Last-mile delivery concepts: A survey from an operational research perspective,” OR Spectrum, Vol.43, No.1, pp. 1-58, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00291-020-00607-8
  2. [2] A. Singhal et al., “Managing a fleet of autonomous mobile robots (AMR) using cloud robotics platform,” 2017 European Conf. on Mobile Robots, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1109/ECMR.2017.8098721
  3. [3] H.-Y. Ryu et al., “Development of an autonomous driving smart wheelchair for the physically weak,” Applied Sciences, Vol.12, No.1, Article No.377, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3390/app12010377
  4. [4] P. Trautman and A. Krause, “Unfreezing the robot: Navigation in dense, interacting crowds,” 2010 IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 797-803, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2010.5654369
  5. [5] Z. Zhou et al., “Robot navigation in a crowd by integrating deep reinforcement learning and online planning,” Applied Intelligence, Vol.52, No.13, pp. 15600-15616, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-022-03191-2
  6. [6] K. Miyamoto, N. Watanabe, and Y. Takefuji, “Adaptation to other agent’s behavior using meta-strategy learning by collision avoidance simulation,” Applied Sciences, Vol.11, No.4, Article No.1786, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3390/app11041786
  7. [7] B. D. Eldridge and A. A. Maciejewski, “Using genetic algorithms to optimize social robot behavior for improved pedestrian flow,” 2005 IEEE Int. Conf. on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Vol.1, pp. 524-529, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSMC.2005.1571199
  8. [8] D. Helbing and P. Molnár, “Social force model for pedestrian dynamics,” Physical Review E, Vol.51, No.5, pp. 4282-4286, 1995. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.51.4282
  9. [9] W. Wu, M. Chen, J. Li, B. Liu, and X. Zheng, “An extended social force model via pedestrian heterogeneity affecting the self-driven force,” IEEE Trans. on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vol.23, No.7, pp. 7974-7986, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2021.3074914
  10. [10] B. F. de Brito, H. Zhu, W. Pan, and J. Alonso-Mora, “Social-VRNN: One-shot multi-modal trajectory prediction for interacting pedestrians,” Proc. of the 2020 Conf. on Robot Learning, pp. 862-872, 2021.
  11. [11] S. Eiffert et al., “Probabilistic crowd GAN: Multimodal pedestrian trajectory prediction using a graph vehicle-pedestrian attention network,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol.5, No.4, pp. 5026-5033, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2020.3004324
  12. [12] S. Bansal, A. Bajcsy, E. Ratner, A. D. Dragan, and C. J. Tomlin, “A Hamilton-Jacobi reachability-based framework for predicting and analyzing human motion for safe planning,” 2020 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp. 7149-7155, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA40945.2020.9197257
  13. [13] R. Karim, S. Weiguo, A. R. Rasa, M. A. Khan, and N. D. Bilintoh, “Comparative study of multidirectional pedestrian flows: Insights and dynamics,” Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Vol.652, Article No.130053, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2024.130053
  14. [14] L. Lévêque, M. Ranchet, J. Deniel, J.-C. Bornard, and T. Bellet, “Where do pedestrians look when crossing? A state of the art of the eye-tracking studies,” IEEE Access, Vol.8, pp. 164833-164843, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3021208
  15. [15] H. Jiang, E. A. Croft, and M. G. Burke, “Social cue detection and analysis using transfer entropy,” Proc. of the 2024 ACM/IEEE Int. Conf. on Human-Robot Interaction, pp. 323-332, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1145/3610977.3634933
  16. [16] H. Okuda, T. Suzuki, K. Harada, S. Saigo, and S. Inoue, “Quantitative driver acceptance modeling for merging car at highway junction and its application to the design of merging behavior control,” IEEE Trans. on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vol.22, No.1, pp. 329-340, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2019.2957391
  17. [17] A. Muraleedharan, H. Okuda, and T. Suzuki, “Pedestrian-aware model predictive controller for design of considerate autonomous driving,” Trans. of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers, Vol.59, No.11, pp. 472-483, 2023 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.9746/sicetr.59.472
  18. [18] K. Suzuki, T. Yamaguchi, H. Okuda, and T. Suzuki, “Indication of interaction plans based on model predictive interaction control: Cooperation between AMRs and pedestrians using eHMI,” 61st Annual Conf. of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers, pp. 1232-1237, 2022. https://doi.org/10.23919/SICE56594.2022.9905833
  19. [19] H. Okuda, N. Ikami, T. Suzuki, Y. Tazaki, and K. Takeda, “Modeling and analysis of driving behavior based on a probability-weighted ARX model,” IEEE Trans. on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vol.14, No.1, pp. 98-112, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2012.2207893
  20. [20] K. Sugiura, M. Aoki, K. Kuroda, H. Okuda, and T. Suzuki, “Evaluation of controllability of interaction between pedestrian and autonomous mobile robot in shared mobility space,” Proc. of the 20th Int. Conf. on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics, Vol.2, pp. 249-257, 2023. https://doi.org/10.5220/0012177500003543
  21. [21] K. Uchida, N. Kodama, H. Okuda, K. Kuroda, and T. Suzuki, “Observation and modeling of decision-making of pedestrian with interactions at X-crossing,” 62nd Annual Conf. of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers, pp. 850-855, 2023. https://doi.org/10.23919/SICE59929.2023.10354219
  22. [22] T. Watanabe et al., “Analysis and modeling of traffic participants considering interactions at intersections without traffic signals,” 2023 IEEE/SICE Int. Symp. on System Integration, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1109/SII55687.2023.10039251
  23. [23] J. Zhao, J. O. Malenje, Y. Tang, and Y. Han, “Gap acceptance probability model for pedestrians at unsignalized mid-block crosswalks based on logistic regression,” Accident Analysis & Prevention, Vol.129, pp. 76-83, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2019.05.012
  24. [24] C.-Y. J. Peng, K. L. Lee, and G. M. Ingersoll, “An introduction to logistic regression analysis and reporting,” The J. of Educational Research, Vol.96, No.1, pp. 3-14, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220670209598786
  25. [25] S. Zhao and F. Pasqualetti, “Discrete-time dynamical networks with diagonal controllability Gramian,” IFAC-PapersOnLine, Vol.50, No.1, pp. 8297-8302, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2017.08.1407
  26. [26] S. Roy and M. Xue, “Controllability-Gramian submatrices for a network consensus model,” Systems & Control Letters, Vol.136, Article No.104575, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sysconle.2019.104575
  27. [27] M. Imran and A. Ghafoor, “Model reduction of descriptor systems using frequency limited Gramians,” J. of the Franklin Institute, Vol.352, No.1, pp. 33-51, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfranklin.2014.10.013

*This site is desgined based on HTML5 and CSS3 for modern browsers, e.g. Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Opera.

Last updated on Dec. 19, 2025