Take It to the Curb: Scalable Communication Between Autonomous Cars and Vulnerable Road Users Through Curbstone Displays

Holländer, Kai; Hoggenmüller, Marius; Gruber, Romy; Völkel, Sarah Theres and Butz, Andreas (2022): Take It to the Curb: Scalable Communication Between Autonomous Cars and Vulnerable Road Users Through Curbstone Displays. In: Frontiers in Computer Science, Vol. 4

Abstract

Automated driving will require new approaches to the communication between vehicles and vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as pedestrians, e.g., through external human-machine interfaces (eHMIs). However, the majority of eHMI concepts are neither scalable (i.e., take into account complex traffic scenarios with multiple vehicles and VRUs), nor do they optimize traffic flow. Speculating on the upgrade of traffic infrastructure in the automated city, we propose Smart Curbs, a scalable communication concept integrated into the curbstone. Using a combination of immersive and non-immersive prototypes, we evaluated the suitability of our concept for complex urban environments in a user study (N = 18). Comparing the approach to a projection-based eHMI, our findings reveal that Smart Curbs are safer to use, as our participants spent less time on the road when crossing. Based on our findings, we discuss the potential of Smart Curbs to mitigate the scalability problem in AV-pedestrian communication and simultaneously enhance traffic flow.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics > Computer Science
• Subjects: 000 Computer science, information and general works > 004 Data processing computer science
• Language: English
• DFG: Gefördert durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - 491502892