Interpreting externally expressed intentions of an autonomous vehicle

With the imminent addition of autonomous vehicles to traffic, it is becoming more vital to look at different alternatives to non-verbal communication between the driver and the pedestrian, so that the pedestrian would understand the intentions of autonomous vehicles. The aim of this paper is to evaluate different approaches to communicate the intent of an autonomous vehicle. A survey study was conducted among Estonian people to analyze their understanding of animations of more prominent explicit external interaction modalities. The study revealed that participants may not understand the vehicle intent if they have no prior knowledge about the displayed signals.