  We consider a microscopic model (a system of self-propelled particles) to
study the behaviour of a large group of pedestrians walking in a corridor. Our
point of interest is the effect of anisotropic interactions on the global
behaviour of the crowd. The anisotropy we have in mind reflects the fact that
people do not perceive (i.e. see, hear, feel or smell) their environment
equally well in all directions. The dynamics of the individuals in our model
follow from a system of Newton-like equations in the overdamped limit. The
instantaneous velocity is modelled in such a way that it accounts for the angle
under which an individual perceives another individual. We investigate the
effects of this perception anisotropy by means of simulations, very much in the
spirit of molecular dynamics. We define a number of characteristic quantifiers
(including the polarization index and Morisita index) that serve as measures
for e.g. organization and clustering, and we use these indices to investigate
the influence of anisotropy on the global behaviour of the crowd. The goal of
the paper is to investigate the potentiality of this model; extensive
statistical analysis of simulation data, or reproducing any specific real-life
situation are beyond its scope.
