“What’s the Robo-Driver up to?” Requirements for Screen-based Awareness and Intent Communication in Autonomous Buses

Abstract

Autonomous buses are expected to become a cornerstone of future mobility systems. Especially during their introduction, passengers may require reassurance about the vehicle’s awareness of the situation on the road and of its intended next actions to further acceptance. In order to investigate the need and requirements for information about the vehicle’s awareness and intent from the perspective of first-time users, we conducted two user studies in a state-of-the-art autonomous bus at public demonstration spaces. In the first study, participants underwent a demonstration ride with the bus and were then asked about their needs for awareness and intent communication. The second study took participants on a ‘simulated ride’ within a stationary bus, in which typical scenarios of the road ahead were presented, together with different awareness and intent cues. Our results suggest that, first, future autonomous bus passengers may be in need of such awareness and intent communication screens. Second, we found that awareness and intent communication may be of greater importance for the indication of potential hazard recognition than for indicating route directions. Third, due to their complementary strengths, none of the three compared types of visual communication (text, icon and augmented reality) should be used in isolation.

Understanding the Headless Rider: Display-Based Awareness and Intent-Communication in Automated Vehicle-Pedestrian Interaction in Mixed Traffic

“…Furthermore, this location met the important requirement not to hinder the operator's view to the outside road situation. The creation of the screen designs was based on those three design elements that seemed most promising for the given purpose, based on the reviewed literature [35]: text and icons for both awareness and intent communication and an augmented reality view (AR-the augmented reality (AR) view refers to the technology of "augmenting" the AS's visual perception of its environment with digital information being superimposed. In this study, the digital information is the AS's awareness, which is represented by a frame around the perceived object or road user) only for the former.…”

“…In this study, the digital information is the AS's awareness, which is represented by a frame around the perceived object or road user) only for the former. All three of these design elements had shown complementary strengths and weaknesses with regard to cultural dependability, cognitive workload, and the simplification of complex causal relations [35]. Besides, this, we examined the effect of color on the comprehensibility and visibility of the communicated message.…”