A Concept of Lighting Bars for Improving Passengers' Safety of Driverless Buses

To address traffic issues, the integration of autonomous vehicles, which operate without an onboard driver, is highly anticipated. However, their widespread use is hindered by the danger of inertial forces. One strategy to the danger inherent in autonomous vehicles is to display information about the vehicle's behavior and status to passengers. Information presented using monitors and Head-Up Displays (HUDs) have used the passenger's central field of view. We propose lighting bars which use peripheral vision to relieve passengers of the central vision task, allowing them to receive information without interrupting their tasks. To improve passenger safety on driverless buses, the ability of lighting bars to receive information about vehicle behavior and status was tested. An original lighting-type HMI, which lights up or blinks in conjunction with the acceleration/deceleration of a bus was proposed and developed for preliminary experiments. This system was installed in real bus, which is used in Japan, and a preliminary experiment for evaluation of the proposed system was performed. It presumed that lighting bars improve safety for those who feel unsafe with driverless buses.