Symbolic Vehicle-Pedestrian Interaction

Due to ongoing advances in automated vehicles, self-driving cars will soon participate on everyday traffic. Missing driver-pedestrian interaction subducts pedestrian's safe and calm feeling especially when crossing a street, which is why a natural vehicle-pedestrian-interaction gains importance. Therefore, a study for symbolic communication is conducted, where two displays with a size of 300 x 230 mm are mounted on a vehicle's front. 35 test persons where asked to evaluate intuitiveness of 30 symbols and correlate them to given situations. Thereby, groups of understandable and incomprehensible signs can be formed. On basis of reaction times (min. 2.72 s) and given answers (max. 74 % correctly answered) it can be shown, that the used symbols show little intuitiveness. Therefor, an open-answer test design was used. For dynamic situations, dynamic icons are preferred.