According to research, the biggest obstacle driverless vehicles have to overcome is trust with pedestrians. To study human behavior around autonomous vehicles and build trust, Jaguar Land Rover is putting eyes on its driverless pods.
The project is part of the government-supported UK Autodrive initiative and is being deployed by the the Jaguar Land Rover Future Mobility division. It’s meant to help carmakers better understand how people react around driverless cars and determine if something can be done to make them trust these vehicles.
As of this moment, about 63 percent of pedestrians and cyclists say they would feel less safe on the road with driverless cars, because they can’t trust technology to protect them. So JLR is putting eyes on its pods, to assure people they’re being “seen.”
For the record, the eyes on the pods don’t really “see” anything, but they do seem to be an efficient way of communicating with pedestrians that their sensors have noticed them. They’re virtual, cartoonish eyes with eyelids, which move from object to object.
For the time being, the virtual eyes are tested in-house. They won’t necessarily be included on Jaguar or Land Rover driverless vehicles, but they will serve to help the company understand human behavior. The goal is to find out whether visual cues from the car (the pod, in this context) would make pedestrians feel safer at zebra crossings, as the video at the bottom of the page shows.
“It’s second nature to glance at the driver of an approaching vehicle before stepping into the road. Understanding how this translates in tomorrow’s more automated world is important,” Pete Bennet, Jaguar Land Rover’s Future Mobility Research Manager, says.
“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 recognized is enough to improve confidence,” Bennet adds.
As of this moment, about 63 percent of pedestrians and cyclists say they would feel less safe on the road with driverless cars, because they can’t trust technology to protect them. So JLR is putting eyes on its pods, to assure people they’re being “seen.”
For the record, the eyes on the pods don’t really “see” anything, but they do seem to be an efficient way of communicating with pedestrians that their sensors have noticed them. They’re virtual, cartoonish eyes with eyelids, which move from object to object.
For the time being, the virtual eyes are tested in-house. They won’t necessarily be included on Jaguar or Land Rover driverless vehicles, but they will serve to help the company understand human behavior. The goal is to find out whether visual cues from the car (the pod, in this context) would make pedestrians feel safer at zebra crossings, as the video at the bottom of the page shows.
“It’s second nature to glance at the driver of an approaching vehicle before stepping into the road. Understanding how this translates in tomorrow’s more automated world is important,” Pete Bennet, Jaguar Land Rover’s Future Mobility Research Manager, says.
“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 recognized is enough to improve confidence,” Bennet adds.