Pedestrian Perception of Autonomous Vehicles with External Interacting Features

The increasing number of autonomous vehicles has raised questions regarding pedestrian interaction with autonomous vehicles. Researchers have studied external interfaces designed for vehicle operators and other road-users (e.g., pedestrians). Most past studies have considered the interaction between pedestrians and autonomous vehicles with no visible operator. However, pedestrian-autonomous vehicle interaction may be complicated when there is a human sitting in the conventional driver’s seat of an autonomous vehicle. Such a scenario may cause some pedestrians to look to the passenger for cues when they should be looking for cues from the vehicle. The objective of the current study was to investigate pedestrians’ perspective of autonomous vehicles based on the interaction effect between passenger status and external features on the vehicle. Sixteen pedestrians completed a VR experiment. The results provided important insight into the important question of pedestrian-autonomous vehicle interaction when passengers are present in the driver seat of the vehicle.