混雑環境における歩行者群追従を利用した福祉車両のナビゲーション

抄録

In recent years, welfare vehicles have been required to drive autonomously in spaces where many pedestrians pass by, and they must avoid collisions with pedestrians while driving. One of the ways to avoid collisions in crowded areas is to navigate by following pedestrians. By following pedestrians walking in the same direction, it is possible to reach a destination by following the pedestrians’ stream. However, in crowded areas, pedestrians walking in front of you do not always continue to walk in the desired direction. The vehicle must change a single target pedestrian when the pedestrian walking in front changes direction. If the pedestrian to be followed changes frequently, the vehicle may move unexpectedly. In this paper, we propose a method to follow a cluster of pedestrians as a group instead of following a single pedestrian. By following a cluster of pedestrians, it is possible to suppress the sudden change of the target point to be followed when one pedestrian changes direction. The effectiveness of the proposed method is clarified by experiment.