Designing Interactions With Shared AVs in Complex Urban Mobility Scenarios

TL;DR

This paper explores the design and evaluation of an external human-machine interface for shared autonomous vehicles in complex urban environments, emphasizing user trust and interaction preferences.

Contribution

It introduces a human-centered design process for eHMI in shared AVs, combining tangible testing and virtual reality evaluation in complex scenarios.

Findings

Participants focus on critical eHMI messages in complex scenarios.

Implicit cues like pick-up maneuvers influence trust and experience.

Explicit interaction modes are preferred for better communication.

Abstract

In this article, we report on the design and evaluation of an external human-machine interface (eHMI) for a real autonomous vehicle (AV), developed to operate as a shared transport pod in a pedestrianized urban space. We present insights about our human-centered design process, which included testing initial concepts through a tangible toolkit and evaluating 360-degree recordings of a staged pick-up scenario in virtual reality. Our results indicate that in complex mobility scenarios, participants filter for critical eHMI messages; further, we found that implicit cues (i.e., pick-up manoeuvre and proximity to the rider) influence participants' experience and trust, while at the same time more explicit interaction modes are desired. This highlights the importance of considering interactions with shared AVs as a service more holistically, in order to develop knowledge about AV-pedestrian interactions in complex mobility scenarios that complements more targeted eHMI evaluations.