Intent Communication Between Autonomous Vehicles and Pedestrians

Abstract

When pedestrians encounter vehicles, they typically stop and wait for a signal from the driver to either cross or wait. What happens when the car is autonomous and there isn't a human driver to signal them? This paper seeks to address this issue with an intent communication system (ICS) that acts in place of a human driver. This intent system has been developed to take into account the psychology behind what pedestrians are familiar with and expect from machines and integrate those expectations into the design. The goal of the system is to ensure that communication is simple, yet effective without leaving pedestrians with a sense of distrust in autonomous vehicles. To validate the ICS, two types of experiments have been run: simulations to account for multiple behaviors and field tests to determine how humans actually interact with the ICS. The results from both experiments show that humans react positively and more predictably when the intent of the vehicle is communicated compared to when the intent of the vehicle is unknown.