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The Leader-Follower Winding Behavior of Pedestrians in a Queue
Abstract
An extended social force model is proposed to depict queue walking behaviors ignoring repulsive forces. Nevertheless only the driving force is extracted and each person regards the one who locates in the nearest place ahead in the initial stationary state, as the target point. With the model new phenomena are observed: if the initial distance between two neighbors remains in the walking process, all members form a line-like pattern. Increasing the initial distance, a series of fluctuation of the queue emerge, which reflects one micro disturbance from the origin arousing qualitative change in its relevant system, and closely resemble the “butterfly effectâ€. Eventually, all pedestrians overcome fluctuations and recover the stabilized line-walking queue. The results enhance understanding of queue winding behavior, and provide new insight into traffic management and safety control