Researchers from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom used a camouflaged driver to look at how pedestrians reacted to visual cues from oncoming cars without a person behind the wheel. People trying to cross the street as the group's Nissan Leaf test car approached could be forgiven for believing it was a fully autonomous vehicle, as the human driver wore clothing designed to look like a car seat, including the full headrest that resembles a headrest. It allows the driver to control the vehicle. The idea behind the study was to explore the use of different External Human-Machine Interfaces (HMI) to determine public trust in autonomous vehicles and communicate the vehicle's intentions or driving behavior to pedestrians.
The team experimented with three types of visual displays via an addressable RGB LED matrix on the front of the hood and an LED strip on the windshield.
The initial design "used LED strip to mimic an eye's papillary response: lateral movement indicated scanning/awareness, and blinking provided an implicit cue of the vehicle's intent to give way." A second design utilizes a face and eyes on the matrix display, accompanied by "human-like language" text prompts when the car approaches a pedestrian (like "I saw you" or "I'm giving way"), while a third produced a vehicle icon and "vehicle-centered" to try to convey the message language" used.
The eHMIs were programmed using an Arduino Mega microcontroller board and triggered by a backseat team member via push-button controls. The test vehicle was driven around the university campus for several days, and the front and rear front camera images recorded the interactions of 520 pedestrians encountered during the study period. More researchers were positioned at the crossing points to ask people to complete a short questionnaire about the whole experience.
The study was recently presented at the Ergonomics and Human Factors 2023 Conference. The team wants to explore how other vulnerable road users naturally interact with autonomous vehicles down the road and also recommends conducting research over longer periods "to understand how the public's response to a driverless vehicle may change over time."
Source:
https://newatlas.com/automotive/ghost-driver-autonomous-vehicle-visual-prompts/
