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Ergonomics
AG, Nordsys GmbH, Robert Bosch GmbH, Technische
Universität München, Volkswagen AG, Würzburger Institut
für Verkehrswissenschaften GmbH.
PedSiVal – Cross Platform Validation of Pedestrian
Simulators
Stimulated by technological progress and a growing
concern for vulnerable road users, pedestrian simulators
have become a valuable and flexible tool to analyze
hazardous traffic constellations and the interaction with
recent technologies (e.g. vehicle automation). At the same
time, the abstraction inherent to any simulation results in
differences between virtual and naturalistic environments,
potentially altering human behavior and thus compromis-
ing the generalizability of experimental results.
To investigate the level of agreement in perceptual,
decisional and motoric processes, PedSiVal employs a
threefold approach:
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To assess the influence of technological characteristics,
two diverse simulator settings are compared. While
the French IFSTTAR employs a CAVE consisting of
ten projection screens, at the Chair of Ergonomics the
environment is displayed via a head-mounted device.
Differences include the potential for stereoscopic vision
and the visibility of the own body in contrast to an
avatar.
■■
To evaluate more generally the employment of a
virtual environment, human behavior on a test track is
compared to a matching simulated environment.
■■
To gain insight into behavior biased neither by differ-
ences in perceptual cues, nor by observer effects or
experimental artificiality, data from naturalistic traffic
observations are gathered at various locations in
Munich.
Identifying the kind and magnitude of potential differences
is essential to allow for the sound and meaningful inter-
pretation of existing results and to support the design of
future studies promoting traffic safety and efficiency.
interACT – Designing cooperative interaction of
automated vehicles with other road users in mixed
traffic environments
Pedestrian Simulator (Reference: Tobias Hase, TUM, 2017)
As automated vehicles (AVs) will be deployed in mixed
traffic, they need to interact safely and efficiently with
other traffic participants. The interACT project will be
working towards the safe integration of AVs into mixed
traffic environments. In order to do so, interACT will
analyze today’s human-human interaction strategies, and
implement and evaluate solutions for safe, cooperative,
and intuitive interactions between AVs and both their
on-board driver and other traffic participants.
Across three European countries (Germany, Greece, & the
UK), data will be collected on how human traffic partici
pants interact in real traffic conditions. Specific situations
will be identified to enable meaningful comparisons. This
data will inform the development of interaction models
that identify the main communication needs of road
users in future traffic scenarios incorporating AVs. These
interaction models will then be used to improve software
algorithms and sensor capabilities for recognizing the
intentions of surrounding road users, and predicting their
behaviours, enabling real cooperation between AVs and
other road users. On the vehicle side, the AV itself will
be controlled by a newly developed Cooperation and
Communication Planning Unit that integrates the planning
algorithms, provides synchronized and integrated interac-
tion protocols for the AV, and includes a safety layer that
is based on an easy-to-verify software with novel methods
for fail-safe trajectory planning. In addition, the interACT
project team will use a user-centered design process to
develop, implement and evaluate novel human-machine
interaction elements for communicating with surrounding
road users.
interACT results will be demonstrated using driving and
pedestrian simulators and two vehicle demonstrators.
(Reference: Consortium interACT, 2017)