ArticleBiology letters2018
Walking crowds on a shaky surface: stable walkers discover Millennium Bridge oscillations with and without pedestrian synchrony.
Article in Biology letters, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Amplitude and frequency of human gait synchronization with a machine oscillator system.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Exploration-based learning of a stabilizing controller predicts locomotor adaptation.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Emergence of the London Millennium Bridge instability without synchronisation.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Spontaneous synchronization of motion in pedestrian crowds of different densities.Nature human behaviour · 2021Article
- A controller for walking derived from how humans recover from perturbations.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2019Article
- Walking crowds on a shaky surface: stable walkers discover Millennium Bridge oscillations with and without pedestrian synchrony.Biology letters · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Why did the London Millennium Bridge shake when there was a big enough crowd walking on it? What features of human walking dynamics when coupled to a shaky surface produce such shaking? Here, we use a simple biped model capable of walking stably in three dimensions to examine these questions. We simulate multiple such stable bipeds walking simultaneously on a bridge, showing that they naturally synchronize under certain conditions, but that synchronization is not required to shake the bridge. Under such shaking conditions, the simulated walkers increase their step widths and expend more metabolic energy than when the bridge does not shake. We also find that such bipeds can walk stably on externally shaken treadmills, synchronizing with the treadmill motion for a range of oscillation amplitudes and frequencies. Our simulations illustrate how interactions between (idealized) bipeds through the walking surface can produce emergent collective behaviour that may not be exhibited by just a single biped.
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