Ghost driver: A platform for investigating interactions between pedestrians and driverless vehicles

Rothenbücher, Dirk; Li, Jamy; Sirkin, David M.; Mok, Brian Ka Jun; Ju, Wendy G.

Abstract

How will pedestrians and cyclists interact with self-driving cars when there is no human driver? To find answers to this question we need a secure experimental design in which pedestrians can interact with a car that appears to drive on its own. In Ghost Driver we staged a fake autonomous car by installing LIDARs, cameras and decals on the outside of the vehicle and by covering the driver with a seat costume so that it appeared that there was no driver in the car. In initial field studies we found that this Wizard-of-Oz technique convinced more than 80% of the participants that the car was driving autonomously without a driver. Consequently the Ghost Driver methodology could become a platform for further investigation of how pedestrians or cyclists interact with driverless vehicles.

Citation

Rothenbücher, D., Li, J., Sirkin, D. M., Mok, B. K. J., & Ju, W. G. (2015, September). Ghost driver: A platform for investigating interactions between pedestrians and driverless vehicles. Presented at AutomotiveUI '15, Nottingham, UK

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: AutomotiveUI '15
• Start Date: Sep 1, 2015
• End Date: Sep 3, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Sep 1, 2015
• Publication Date: 2015-09
• Deposit Date: May 7, 2024
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 44-49
• Book Title: AutomotiveUI '15: Adjunct Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications
• ISBN: 9781450338585
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2809730.2809755