Drive Right: Shaping Public’s Trust, Understanding, and Preference Towards Autonomous Vehicles Using a Virtual Reality Driving Simulator

Autonomous vehicles are increasingly introduced into our lives. Yet, people’s misunderstanding and mistrust have become the major obstacles to the use of these technologies. In response to this problem, proper work must be done to increase public’s understanding and awareness and help drivers rationally evaluate the system. The method proposed in this paper is a virtual reality driving simulator which serves as a low-cost platform for autonomous vehicle demonstration and education. To test the validity of the platform, we recruited 36 participants and conducted a test training drive using three different scenarios. The results show that our simulator successfully increased participants’ understanding while favorably changing their attitude towards the autonomous system. The methodology and findings presented in this paper can be further explored by driving schools, auto manufacturers, and policy makers, to improve training for autonomous vehicles.