What is it about?
Imagine this. You are a pedestrian about to cross the street. You turn to look and see a vehicle approaching. You see that the driver’s seat is empty. What would you do? How would you feel? If the vehicle could give some kind of indication to you that would help you feel better, what could that be? What if the vehicle could indicate its awareness of you? That is the focus of this research. Studies show that pedestrians often use social cues for negotiating right of way scenarios such as a crosswalk or when jaywalking. So vehicles without human drivers creates a social communication gap. This study proposes a novel display for autonomous vehicles to convey awareness to pedestrians. Pedestrian icon which moves along with the pedestrian. The study found that the “awareness display” significantly increased pedestrians’ sense of safety and comfort.
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Photo by Gunnar Madlung on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Autonomous vehicles are quickly scaling up and will interact with many more pedestrians than passengers. It is important that we feel comfortable and safe with AVs operating on our streets and in our neighborhoods.
Perspectives
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first design that is easy to understand (almost intuitive) while it also helps pedestrians feel safer and more comfortable. This is the Holy Grail of interface design! We didn't think this idea would test well, so were thrilled with the results! The goal is to help pedestrians feel comfortable with the technology. As the tech scales up and there are more vehicles around, we owe it to ourselves to really understand this, and to get it right.
Paul Schmitt
MassRobotics
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: I See You! Design Factors for Supporting Pedestrian-AV Interaction at Crosswalks, March 2023, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3568294.3580107.
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