Digital Twins: Simulating Robot-Human Sidewalk Interactions

This paper investigates the interactions between sidewalk delivery robots and pedestrians in urban settings to evaluate pedestrian safety and robot efficiency in shared spaces. We developed a 3D digital twin environment model that allows realistic simulation of robot-human and robot-cityscape interactions, adopting the Pedestrian Aware Model (PAM) to ensure effective and safe navigation. Using an agent-based modeling approach, we analyze various scenarios involving pedestrians, wheelchair users, and robots sharing sidewalk spaces. Our findings reveal that robots do not inherently contribute to sidewalk congestion and can be programmed to maintain a buffer zone that allows for both safety and efficiency, suggesting their potential for smooth coexistence with pedestrians. We observed that robots caused most collisions, while pedestrians were primarily responsible for proximity violations of minimum distance thresholds, emphasizing the need for further research and strategies to reduce further the risks associated with these incidents. The results suggest that with careful design-oriented planning and continued research, robots can safely and comfortably share sidewalks with pedestrians, contributing to a more harmonious and efficient urban landscape. Our proposed simulation model can assist urban planners, policymakers, and researchers in evaluating the influence of various design interventions and policies on human-robot coexistence in cities, marking a crucial step toward accommodating both humans and robots in urban spaces.