Looming silhouette: an approaching visual stimulus device for pedestrians to avoid collisions

We are exposed daily to the risk of collision at numerous blind intersections. To avoid the risk of collision, we propose a system that elicits an "approaching sensation" by presenting a visual stimulus. Possible factors for the approaching sensation are the "expansion" and "motion" of a silhouette. We compared the effects of these two factors on the approaching sensation and found that to elicit an approaching sensation, the expansion factor is important, and the motion factor has a certain effect in alarming pedestrians. On the base of this result, we produced a system that presents an expanding and moving silhouette of an approaching pedestrian to the pedestrians user.