Pre-instruction for Pedestrians Interacting Autonomous Vehicles with an eHMI: Effects on Their Psychology and Walking Behavior

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that pre-instruction about external human-machine interfaces (eHMI) improves pedestrians' understanding, subjective feelings, and walking behavior when interacting with autonomous vehicles, leading to safer and more predictable crossings.

Contribution

It introduces pre-instruction as a method to enhance pedestrian-AV communication via eHMI, improving comprehension and behavior predictability.

Findings

Pre-instruction improves pedestrians' understanding of AV intentions.

Participants' subjective feelings and hesitation decrease after pre-instruction.

Walking speeds become more consistent with eHMI use after pre-instruction.

Abstract

External human-machine interface (eHMI) is considered as a new explicit communication method for pedestrian-AV interactions, particularly in encounter scenarios. Pedestrians without prior negotiation experience with eHMI may misinterpret the driving intentions of AV, leading to confusion and unpredictable behavior. To address this, our study suggests providing pre-instruction on eHMI to enhance comprehension. To compare pedestrians' subjective feelings and walking behavior changes with and without the use of eHMI, as well as before and after receiving pre-instructions, a road crossing experiment using a within-subject design was conducted. In the experiment, the participants were challenged to recognize situations and experienced uncertainty when encountering AVs lacking eHMI, in contrast to manual driving vehicles. After the pre-instruction, participants could understand the driving intention of an AV with eHMI and predict its driving behavior more easily. Furthermore, participants' subjective feelings and hesitation to make decisions improved to align with the same criteria as encountered with a manual driving vehicle. Additionally, this study found that the information guidance effect of using eHMI makes participants' walking speeds more consistent over multiple trials after pre-instruction.