A Virtual Reality based Approach for Researching Pedestrian to Vehicle Collisions

This paper presents a novel approach for the research on pedestrian to vehicle collisions in a realistic virtual environment. The reactions and crossing behavior of test subjects were examined using a pedestrian simulator, consisting of a full body wireless motion capture system and virtual reality glasses in which a virtual traffic environment is displayed. The crossing behavior of 23 participants was investigated in 9 different virtual traffic scenarios in which the velocities of the approaching vehicles, driving direction and traffic density is varied. In case of a virtual collision the body posture and impact position at the vehicle front was captured. Based on the variety of captured body postures at time of collision, typical pedestrian accident postures can be determined. The data was used as input to investigate the influence of the body posture on kinematics of the pedestrian during a car-pedestrian-impact using the Finite-Element Method (FEM). Therefore, the current standard SAE pedestrian test posture was compared to a non-standard posture which was recorded using the pedestrian simulator. In summary, the virtual reality based approach can be used for reproducible research on pedestrian to vehicle collisions, precollision pedestrian behavior and reactions and the optimization of pedestrian test models.