Applicability of Virtual Reality Systems for Evaluating Pedestrians' Perception and Behavior

In order to properly design pedestrian spaces, it is important to consider pedestrian safety and comfort. Recently, with the rapid progress of virtual reality (VR) technologies, reproducing objects closer to VR users has become easier. Therefore, VR systems are expected to be valuable tools for evaluating safety and comfort from the pedestrians' viewpoint. In particular, VR enables users to interact not only with ordinary vehicles but also with surrounding pedestrians or personal mobility vehicles, and thus a wider range of applications are expected. However, most attempts to validate VR performance have so far have been limited to cases of pedestrians encountering ordinary vehicles. In this research, pedestrians' cognition and behavioral characteristics toward other pedestrians and personal mobility vehicles were analyzed by comparing those measured in VR and in real spaces. It was shown that the perception of distance and subjective danger from personal mobility vehicles are not different in VR and real spaces when the vehicle approaches VR participants from the front and back, although the subjective danger tends to be less sensitive to the lateral space between VR participants and the personal mobility vehicle. It was also revealed that VR participants tend to keep a larger lateral clearance than in real spaces when avoiding other pedestrians. (C) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.