Before crossing a street, pedestrians need to trust that oncoming traffic will stop. But what if that traffic is full of autonomous vehicles (AVs)? What influences whether pedestrians trust AVs? This U-M study puts participants in VR to measure that: [ Ссылка ]
“Pedestrians are the most vulnerable road users,” said Suresh Kumaar Jayaraman, a PhD student in mechanical engineering and lead author of the study. “If we want wide-scale adoption of autonomous vehicles, we need those who are inside and outside of the vehicles to be able to trust and be comfortable with a vehicle’s actions.”
The team put study participants in a unique virtual reality setup, equipped with an omnidirectional treadmill, typically used for gaming, that allows walking in any direction. The participants were tasked with moving three balls, one at a time, from one side of a street to another as simulated autonomous vehicles zipped by.
To the researchers, there’s an optimum level of pedestrian trust that makes pedestrians feel comfortable to cross roads, while not so comfortable as to encourage risky behavior. Future automated cars could adjust their driving behavior to hit this right amount of trust.
This study was led by Lionel Robert, associate professor of information, who collaborated with Dawn Tilbury, professor of mechanical engineering, and X. Jessie Yang, assistant professor of industrial and operations engineering. This team works together in the MAVRIC lab (Michigan Autonomous Vehicle Research Intergroup Collaboration) out of the U-M School of Information:
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The paper was published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI on November 28, 2019, and is titled, “Pedestrian Trust in Automated Vehicles: Role of Traffic Signal and AV Driving Behavior”
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