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A system-theoretic representation of both model types is presented, which highlights their common feedback structure, although with different state variables. Several navigation policies based on reinforcement learning are trained and tested in various simulated environments involving pedestrian crowds modeled with these approaches. A comparative study is conducted to assess performance across multiple factors, including human motion model, navigation policy, scenario complexity and crowd density. The results highlight advantages and challenges of different approaches to modeling human behavior, as well as their role during training and testing of learning-based navigation policies. The findings offer valuable insights and guidelines for selecting appropriate human motion models when designing socially-aware robot navigation systems.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3746463","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,6,27]],"date-time":"2025-06-27T09:31:12Z","timestamp":1751016672000},"page":"1-33","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["A Comparative Study of Human Motion Models in Reinforcement Learning Algorithms for Social Robot Navigation"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"15","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0008-2448-4472","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Tommaso","family":"Van Der Meer","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell\u2019Informazione e Scienze Matematiche, Universit\u00e0 di Siena, Siena, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4174-073X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Andrea","family":"Garulli","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell\u2019Informazione e Scienze Matematiche, Universit\u00e0 di Siena, Siena, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9756-7817","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Antonio","family":"Giannitrapani","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell\u2019Informazione e Scienze Matematiche, Universit\u00e0 di Siena, Siena, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6861-1869","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Renato","family":"Quartullo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell\u2019Informazione e Scienze Matematiche, Universit\u00e0 di Siena, Siena, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_2_2_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.robot.2017.03.002"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_3_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/ROBIO.2018.8665075"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_4_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.robot.2021.103837"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_5_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3390\/s22031191"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_6_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3583741"},{"issue":"10","key":"e_1_3_2_7_2","first-page":"027836492412305","article-title":"A survey on socially aware robot navigation: Taxonomy and future challenges","author":"Singamaneni P. 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