Pedestrians’ Understanding of a Fully Autonomous Vehicle’s Intent to Stop: A Learning Effect Over Time

This study explored pedestrians’ understanding of Fully Autonomous Vehicles (FAVs) intention to stop and what influences pedestrians’ decision to cross the road over time, i.e., learnability. Twenty participants saw fixed simulated urban road crossing scenes with a single FAV on the road as if they were pedestrians intending to cross. Scenes differed from one another in the FAV’s, distance from the crossing place, its physical size, and external Human-Machine Interfaces (e-HMI) message by background color (red/green), message type (status/advice), and presentation modality (text/symbol). Eye-tracking data and decision measurements were collected. Results revealed that pedestrians tend to look at the e-HMI before making their decision. However, they did not necessarily decide according to the e-HMIs’ color or message type. Moreover, when they complied with the e-HMI proposition, they tended to hesitate before making the decision. Overall, a learning effect over time was observed in all conditions regardless of e- HMI features and crossing context. Findings suggest that pedestrians’ decision making depends on a combination of the e-HMI implementation and the car distance. Moreover, since the learning curve exists in all conditions and has the same proportion, it is critical to design an interaction that would encourage higher probability of compatible decisions from the first phase. However, to extend all these findings, it is necessary to further examine dynamic situations.