Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Motor schema-based cellular automaton model for pedestrian and evacuation dynamics states that each pedestrian is treated as an intelligent mobile robot, and motor schemas including move-to-goal, avoid-away and avoid-around drive pedestrians to interact with their environment. Small grid analysis of this model for the check of the effect of different numbers of small grid at an update time-step with the same desired walk velocity, on the travel time, is conducted. Experiments of unidirectional pedestrian flow with different walk velocities were carried out to validate the presented model. The lower walk velocity was provided by the normal people with special equipment, which made them walk slowly, to imitate the elderly people. Firstly the walk velocities of the normal people and the imitated elderly people were measured. Travel time of each pedestrian from start line to goal line was measured to compare with simulation results. The comparison results indicate that the experimental observations can be well reproduced with the motor schema-based cellular automaton model. And the simulation results of the mean travel time with one small grid at an update time-step agree well with the experimental data. It illustrates that the presented motor schema-based cellular automaton model with an appropriate small grid at an update time-step is efficient in the simulation of pedestrian flow and is a useful tool for fire safety research and management.