A deep pedestrian trajectory generator for complex indoor environments

Abstract

Pedestrian trajectory data, which can be used to mine pedestrian motion patterns or to model pedestrian dynamics, is crucial for indoor location‐based service studies and applications. However, researchers are faced with the challenges of data shortage and privacy restrictions when using pedestrian trajectory data. We present an Indoor Pedestrian Trajectory Generator (IPTG), which is a novel deep learning model to synthesize pedestrian trajectory data. IPTG first produces feature sequences that encode the spatial–temporal and semantic features of the walking process and then interpolates them into complete trajectories using A* and perturbation algorithms. IPTG has specially designed loss functions that preserve topological constraints and semantic characteristics. Incorporating the prior knowledge of environment constraints and pedestrian walking patterns, the IPTG model is capable of generating topologically and logically sound indoor pedestrian trajectories. We evaluated the synthesized trajectories based on multiple metrics and examined the generated trajectories qualitatively. The results show that IPTG outperforms several baselines, demonstrating its ability to generate semantically meaningful and spatiotemporally coherent trajectories.