LiDAR for Crowd Management: Applications, Benefits, and Future Directions

Abstract

Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology offers significant advantages for effective crowd management. This article presents LiDAR technology and highlights its primary advantages over other monitoring technologies, including enhanced privacy, performance in various weather conditions, and precise 3D mapping. We present a general taxonomy of four key tasks in crowd management: crowd detection, counting, tracking, and behavior classification, with illustrative examples of LiDAR applications for each task. We identify challenges and open research directions, including the scarcity of dedicated datasets, sensor fusion requirements, artificial intelligence integration, and processing needs for LiDAR point clouds. This article offers actionable insights for developing crowd management solutions tailored to public safety applications.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: Illustration of LiDAR scanning the crowd in public space.
• Figure 2: Comparison of an RGB camera image versus a LiDAR point cloud for the same crowded scene generated using a simulator. LiDAR eliminates people's faces and identifying features from collected data, preserving individual privacy in monitored areas.
• Figure 3: Representation of crowd management tasks and the analytical tools necessary for implementing effective crowd control strategies.
• Figure 4: End-to-end AI-enabled LiDAR crowd management framework illustrating the main processing stages from data acquisition to crowd analysis tasks and decision support.
• Figure 5: High-level, integrated taxonomy of LiDAR-based crowd management systems illustrating the relationships between point cloud types, crowd descriptors, analytical methods, core tasks, decision-making components, and application domains.