{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/the-simpler-the-better-constant-velocity-for","title":"What the Constant Velocity Model Can Teach Us About Pedestrian Motion Prediction","arxiv_id":"1903.07933","date":"2019-03-19","proceeding":null,"authors":["Christoph Schöller","Vincent Aravantinos","Florian Lay","Alois Knoll"],"abstract":"Pedestrian motion prediction is a fundamental task for autonomous robots and vehicles to operate safely. In recent years many complex approaches based on neural networks have been proposed to address this problem. In this work we show that - surprisingly - a simple Constant Velocity Model can outperform even state-of-the-art neural models. This indicates that either neural networks are not able to make use of the additional information they are provided with, or that this information is not as relevant as commonly believed. Therefore, we analyze how neural networks process their input and how it impacts their predictions. Our analysis reveals pitfalls in training neural networks for pedestrian motion prediction and clarifies false assumptions about the problem itself. In particular, neural networks implicitly learn environmental priors that negatively impact their generalization capability, the motion history of pedestrians is irrelevant and interactions are too complex to predict. Our work shows how neural networks for pedestrian motion prediction can be thoroughly evaluated and our results indicate which research directions for neural motion prediction are promising in future.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.07933v3","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.07933v3.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"the-simpler-the-better-constant-velocity-for","repo_url":"https://github.com/cschoeller/constant_velocity_pedestrian_motion","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":null},{"paper_slug":"the-simpler-the-better-constant-velocity-for","repo_url":"https://github.com/elbuco1/AttentionMechanismsTrajectoryPrediction","is_official":0,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"MIT"}}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"prediction","task_name":"Prediction"},{"task_slug":"motion-prediction","task_name":"motion prediction"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":"https://syntology.ai/paper/1903.07933","atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=1903.07933","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"1903.07933"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-25T09:33:49+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/cschoeller/constant_velocity_pedestrian_motion","reach":null},{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/elbuco1/AttentionMechanismsTrajectoryPrediction","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"MIT"}}],"summary":{"ran_fixture":1,"ran":3,"unverified":2},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":3,"ran":1,"repositories":1},"listed":{"samples":3,"ran":3,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":0,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"e9e82a2209496dde","entry":"constant_velocity_model","repo":"cschoeller/constant_velocity_pedestrian_motion","repo_kind":"official","path":"evaluate.py","file_url":"https://github.com/cschoeller/constant_velocity_pedestrian_motion/blob/HEAD/evaluate.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_fixture","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"RAISES","metamorphic_tier":"invariant","behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"e9e82a2209496dde"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"cc4864b0de4744bb","entry":"find_file_by_extension","repo":"elbuco1/AttentionMechanismsTrajectoryPrediction","repo_kind":"listed","path":"src/features/helpers/helpers.py","file_url":"https://github.com/elbuco1/AttentionMechanismsTrajectoryPrediction/blob/HEAD/src/features/helpers/helpers.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"cc4864b0de4744bb"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"093da9385c920cd8","entry":"min_max_scale","repo":"elbuco1/AttentionMechanismsTrajectoryPrediction","repo_kind":"listed","path":"src/features/helpers/helpers.py","file_url":"https://github.com/elbuco1/AttentionMechanismsTrajectoryPrediction/blob/HEAD/src/features/helpers/helpers.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"093da9385c920cd8"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"e9c2176deb201fcf","entry":"revert_min_max_scale","repo":"elbuco1/AttentionMechanismsTrajectoryPrediction","repo_kind":"listed","path":"src/features/helpers/helpers.py","file_url":"https://github.com/elbuco1/AttentionMechanismsTrajectoryPrediction/blob/HEAD/src/features/helpers/helpers.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"e9c2176deb201fcf"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"682d0b5698dcbcf9","entry":"evaluate_testset","repo":"cschoeller/constant_velocity_pedestrian_motion","repo_kind":"official","path":"evaluate.py","file_url":"https://github.com/cschoeller/constant_velocity_pedestrian_motion/blob/HEAD/evaluate.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"682d0b5698dcbcf9"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"f44792f1ecf2dd5e","entry":"rel_to_abs","repo":"cschoeller/constant_velocity_pedestrian_motion","repo_kind":"official","path":"evaluate.py","file_url":"https://github.com/cschoeller/constant_velocity_pedestrian_motion/blob/HEAD/evaluate.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"f44792f1ecf2dd5e"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}