Generation of Pedestrian Crossing Scenarios Using Ped-Cross Generative Adversarial Network

• Main Authors: James Spooner, Vasile Palade, Madeline Cheah, Stratis Kanarachos, Alireza Daneshkhah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-01-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: CAV; automotive; autonomous; pedestrian; dataset; human pose
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/2/471

The safety of vulnerable road users is of paramount importance as transport moves towards fully automated driving. The richness of real-world data required for testing autonomous vehicles is limited and furthermore, available data do not present a fair representation of different scenarios and rare events. Before deploying autonomous vehicles publicly, their abilities must reach a safety threshold, not least with regards to vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians. In this paper, we present a novel Generative Adversarial Networks named the Ped-Cross GAN. Ped-Cross GAN is able to generate crossing sequences of pedestrians in the form of human pose sequences. The Ped-Cross GAN is trained with the Pedestrian Scenario dataset. The novel Pedestrian Scenario dataset, derived from existing datasets, enables training on richer pedestrian scenarios. We demonstrate an example of its use through training and testing the Ped-Cross GAN. The results show that the Ped-Cross GAN is able to generate new crossing scenarios that are of the same distribution from those contained in the Pedestrian Scenario dataset. Having a method with these capabilities is important for the future of transport, as it will allow for the adequate testing of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles on how they correctly perceive the intention of pedestrians crossing the street, ultimately leading to fewer pedestrian casualties on our roads.