AR-PED: A framework of augmented reality enabled pedestrian-in-the-loop simulation.

• Developed an augmented reality-based pedestrian simulation framework: AR-PED. • AR-PED enables actual pedestrian-in-the-loop simulation in 1:1-scale environment. • Extended capability of microscopic traffic simulation by involving real pedestrians. • Supported different types of users for realistically experiencing traffic simulation. Pedestrian simulators are in high demand for many research and industry applications, such as evaluating pedestrian safety and testing of autonomous vehicles. A recent trend on the development of pedestrian simulators is to use virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD) devices, since they offer a highly immersive and realistic view of the virtual environment (VE). However, existing pedestrian simulators that make use of this technology have a set of limitations that make them unsuitable for the simulation of a large virtual scenario. Specifically, the boundaries of the virtual scene set by these simulators encompass a relatively small area (e.g., a single crosswalk). In light of these issues, this paper aims to develop an augmented reality (AR) enabled pedestrian-in-the-loop simulation (AR-PED) framework that enables the simulation of pedestrians in a large virtual scenario (e.g., a city) with an actual scale. The proposed AR-PED simulation framework is empowered by the latest advances in cloud computing and AR to allow multiple users to access the simulation at the same time. A client-server architecture allows users to act as pedestrians, drive a car or simply visualize the scene simultaneously. Additionally, other vehicles can be artificially generated by a microscopic traffic simulation (MTS) package that acts as the server. A prototype of the proposed framework is implemented and demonstrated by simulating a model of a city. The promising capabilities and performance of the AR-PED framework are attested with the deployable experiments and potential improvements over the present study to further excel the current framework are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]