The role of eye movements in perceiving vehicle speed and time-to-arrival at the roadside

Abstract

To avoid collisions, pedestrians depend on their ability to perceive and interpret the visual motion of other road users. Eye movements influence motion perception, yet pedestrians’ gaze behavior has been little investigated. In the present study, we ask whether observers sample visual information differently when making two types of judgements based on the same virtual road-crossing scenario and to which extent spontaneous gaze behavior affects those judgements. Participants performed in succession a speed and a time-to-arrival two-interval discrimination task on the same simple traffic scenario—a car approaching at a constant speed (varying from 10 to 90 km/h) on a single-lane road. On average, observers were able to discriminate vehicle speeds of around 18 km/h and times-to-arrival of 0.7 s. In both tasks, observers placed their gaze closely towards the center of the vehicle’s front plane while pursuing the vehicle. Other areas of the visual scene were sampled infrequently. No differences were found in the average gaze behavior between the two tasks and a pattern classifier (Support Vector Machine), trained on trial-level gaze patterns, failed to reliably classify the task from the spontaneous eye movements it elicited. Saccadic gaze behavior could predict time-to-arrival discrimination performance, demonstrating the relevance of gaze behavior for perceptual sensitivity in road-crossing.

Should I stay or should I go? The cerebral bases of street‐crossing decision

“…Also congruent with our previous results, triggering eye movements impairs the ability to make a correct street‐crossing decision. It is not surprising as eye movements have been previously found as involved in the accuracy of the TTC estimation (Bennett et al., 2010; Sudkamp et al., 2021).…”

Characteristics of eye movements and correlation to cognitive functions in relation to the location of guide signs and driving speed

“…The speed of this eye movement was 30° /s in terms of the visual angle, which is smaller than that of saccades (Arakawa 2017) and could not be captured by the criteria used in this data collection. This eye movement has been reported to be related to driving (Arakawa 2017;Sudkamp et al 2021), and future research on destination recognition within guide signs, including smooth-pursuit eye movements, is warranted.…”

Research on the Movement Speed of Situational Map Symbols Based on User Dynamic Preference Perception

“…Historically, such speed definitions have often been subjectively determined by designers. To address this issue, the current study incorporated the concept of Just Noticeable Difference in Speed (JNDS) from psychophysics-commonly used to assess an observer's ability to discern differences in speed [6][7][8][9][10]. By establishing velocities according to the observer's JNDS thresholds within the situational map, it could be ensured that sequences of movement can be effectively differentiated.…”