A study of pedestrian stepping behaviour for crowd simulation

Pedestrian stepping behaviour has been widely ignored in crowd simulation models. Yet, the continuous motion of pedestrian torsos is the result of decisions about discrete steps. In this contribution we discuss biomechanical pedestrian stepping behaviour and present arguments that show its importance. In addition, we analyse empirical data from controlled experiments to better understand how pedestrians make their steps. The results show the dependence of step length on speed in different walking situations, like walking sideways or climbing stairs. Independently of whether subjects walked ahead, sideways or backwards in the plane, increasing speed goes along with increasing step lengths.