Reduced model of a reaction-diffusion system for the collective motion of camphor boats.

The unidirectional motion of a camphor boat along an annular water channel is observable. When camphor boats are placed in a water channel, both homogeneous and inhomogeneous states occur as collective motions, depending on the number of boats. The inhomogeneous state is a type of congestion, that is, the velocities of the boats change with temporal oscillation, and the shock wave appears along the line of travel of the boats.

Analytical investigation of the faster-is-slower effect with a simplified phenomenological model.

We investigate the mechanism of the phenomenon called the "faster-is-slower"effect in pedestrian flow studies analytically with a simplified phenomenological model. It is well known that the flow rate is maximized at a certain strength of the driving force in simulations using the social force model when we consider the discharge of self-driven particles through a bottleneck. In this study, we propose a phenomenological and analytical model based on a mechanics-based modeling to reveal the mechanism of the phenomenon.

Propagation speed of a starting wave in a queue of pedestrians.

The propagation speed of a starting wave, which is a wave of people's successive reactions in the relaxation process of a queue, has an essential role for pedestrians and vehicles to achieve smooth movement. For example, a queue of vehicles with appropriate headway (or density) alleviates traffic jams since the delay of reaction to start is minimized. In this paper, we have investigated the fundamental relation between the propagation speed of a starting wave and the initial density by both our mathematical model built on the stochastic cellular automata and experimental measurements.

Improvement of pedestrian flow by slow rhythm.

We have developed a simple model for pedestrians by dividing walking velocity into two parts, which are step size and pace of walking (number of steps per unit time). Theoretical analysis on pace indicates that rhythm that is slower than normal-walking pace in a low-density regime increases flow if the flow-density diagram is convex downward in a high-density regime. In order to verify this result, we have performed an experiment with real pedestrians and observed the improvement of flow in a congested situation using slow rhythm.

Car-following model with relative-velocity effect and its experimental verification.

In driving a vehicle, drivers respond to the changes of both the headway and the relative velocity to the vehicle in front. In this paper a new car-following model including these maneuvers is proposed. The acceleration of the model becomes infinite (has a singularity) when the distance between two vehicles is zero, and the asymmetry between the acceleration and the deceleration is incorporated in a nonlinear way.