As the reality of self-driving vehicles draws closer and closer Jaguar Land Rover has taken steps to test human’s trust in such tech by fitting ‘virtual eyes’ to intelligent pods.
Research has found that approximately 63 per cent of pedestrians are concerned about whether it will be safe to cross the road in the future.
These strange looking eyed pods will be used to determine how much information future self-driving cars could need to share with pedestrians and other road users to allow people to trust the technology.
Joining Jaguar Land Rover on this engineering project will be a team of cognitive psychologists who will assist in developing a better understanding of how vehicle behaviour affects human confidence in the new technology through a range of trust trials.
Initially, tests will be carried out on a fabricated street scene in Coventry where the intelligent pods will run autonomously with the specially designed ‘eyes’ working to seek out a pedestrian trying to cross the street.
The ‘eyes’ have been programmed to ‘look’ at the waiting pedestrian as a sign they have been seen. The behaviour of the pedestrian will then be analysed with engineers recording trust levels in the person before and after the pod ‘looks’ at them. This should indicate whether the gesture generates enough confidence in the pedestrian that the vehicle would stop for them.
Pete Bennett, Future Mobility Research Manager at Jaguar Land Rover, said: “It’s second-nature to glance at the driver of the approaching vehicle before stepping onto the road. Understanding how this translates in tomorrow’s more automated world is important.”
“We want to know if it is beneficial to provide humans with information about a vehicle’s intentions or whether simply letting a pedestrian know it has been recognised is enough to improve confidence.”
These trials are part of a wider study where more than 500 test subjects have already been observed interacting with the self-driving pods which were designed by Aurrigo.
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