Maria Klingegård

Living Room on the Move: Autonomous Vehicles and Social Experiences

Developing autonomous vehicles is technically complex and up to now research has focused on technical improvement and operative safety. As the level of automation increases the role of the driver will change; from controlling every movement of the vehicle into becoming an operator/passenger. Little is known about how this new context will affect the social experiences with and within the vehicle. This workshop focuses on three different kinds of social experience and socializing, namely; between other road users and the autonomous car, the social activities taking place within the autonomous car, and lastly the relationship between the car and the operator. The workshop aims at exploring possible practices, research and design directions of autonomous vehicles in relation to these social experiences. A human-centered design approach is the core of the workshop, with playful field excursions and ideation sessions.

External Vehicle Interfaces for Communication with Other Road Users

How to ensure trust and societal acceptance of automated vehicles (AVs) is a widely-discussed topic today. While trust and acceptance could be influenced by a range of factors, one thing is sure: the ability of AVs to safely and smoothly interact with other road users will play a key role. Based on our experiences from a series of studies, this paper elaborates on issues that AVs may face in interactions with other road users and whether external vehicle interfaces could support these interactions. Our overall conclusion is that such interfaces may be beneficial in situations where negotiation is needed. However, these benefits, and potential drawbacks, need to be further explored to create a common language, or standard, for how AVs should communicate with other road users.

Workshop on Methodology: Evaluating Interactions between Automated Vehicles and Other Road Users---What Works in Practice?

Methods and metrics for studying interactions between automated vehicles and other road users in their vicinity, such as pedestrians, cyclists and non-automated vehicles, are not established yet. This workshop focuses on identifying the strengths and weaknesses of various methodologies that could potentially be used to study such interactions. The objective lies in determining the proper experimental design, sensitivity of metrics for measuring user behavior, ecological validity, generalizability of findings, extraction of insights regarding how findings can be translated into actionable requirements, and the alternatives for conducting longitudinal field studies. It will be of an interactive nature and involve hands-on activities. The workshop will consolidate existing knowledge, identify recurring issues, and explore the path towards resolving these issues. The outcome will be compiled into a paper to share this valuable knowledge with a broader research community.

Communicating Intent of Automated Vehicles to Pedestrians

While traffic signals, signs, and road markings provide explicit guidelines for those operating in and around the roadways, some decisions, such as determinations of “who will go first,” are made by implicit negotiations between road users. In such situations, pedestrians are today often dependent on cues in drivers’ behavior such as eye contact, postures, and gestures. With the introduction of more automated functions and the transfer of control from the driver to the vehicle, pedestrians cannot rely on such non-verbal cues anymore. To study how the interaction between pedestrians and automated vehicles (AVs) might look like in the future, and how this might be affected if AVs were to communicate their intent to pedestrians, we designed an external vehicle interface called automated vehicle interaction principle (AVIP) that communicates vehicles’ mode and intent to pedestrians. The interaction was explored in two experiments using a Wizard of Oz approach to simulate automated driving. The first experiment was carried out at a zebra crossing and involved nine pedestrians. While it focused mainly on assessing the usability of the interface, it also revealed initial indications related to pedestrians’ emotions and perceived safety when encountering an AV with/without the interface. The second experiment was carried out in a parking lot and involved 24 pedestrians, which enabled a more detailed assessment of pedestrians’ perceived safety when encountering an AV, both with and without the interface. For comparison purposes, these pedestrians also encountered a conventional vehicle. After a short training course, the interface was deemed easy for the pedestrians to interpret. The pedestrians stated that they felt significantly less safe when they encountered the AV without the interface, compared to the conventional vehicle and the AV with the interface. This suggests that the interface could contribute to a positive experience and improved perceived safety in pedestrian encounters with AVs – something that might be important for general acceptance of AVs. As such, this topic should be further investigated in future studies involving a larger sample and more dynamic conditions.

A Head-Mounted Display to Support Teleoperations of Shared Automated Vehicles

Automated driving systems will be severely challenged in the unpredictable conditions of mixed traffic. Consequently, some form of human support remains essential in the foreseeable future. This challenge is especially true for Shared Automated Vehicles (SAVs), as these vehicles will likely not include any human driver on-board. When an SAV will encounter a scenario it cannot handle, a remote human operator will need to intervene and help the vehicle and its passengers. In this study a user-centred design approach is used to study whether a Head-Mounted Display (HMD) interface can support such operators and provide them with additional spatial awareness. Two prototypes (an HMD and a computer display) are developed and evaluated using pre-recorded real-world scenarios. Twelve participants assessed three possible scenarios a remote operator may encounter. Among participants, the study found evidence of strong implicit spatial awareness when using an HMD interface.