Road User-Automated Vehicle Expectancies, Interactions, and Safety

Automated vehicles (AVs) have the potential to enable a safe, efficient, equitable, healthy, and sustainable transportation system and communities. However, broad public adoption of AVs is predicated on the AVs’ ability to engage in safe and efficient interactions with other road users: conventional human-driven vehicles (HVs), pedestrians, and bicyclists, in our current infrastructure and traffic systems. Human road users have certain expectancies for how other road users behave and interact accordingly. While humans can anticipate and handle a range of other road users’ behaviors, unexpected behaviors that fall outside or in tail end of the range, i.e., expectancy violations (EVs), can incite improper responses that could have ramifications for traffic safety and operations. Obviously, significant challenges for AV technology remain in coexisting in harmony with human road users, beyond its own proper functionality. The objective of this research is to do the foundational research to prepare to study interactions between human-driven vehicles, pedestrians, and automated vehicles to elucidate potential expectancy violations and consequent impact on safety. Eventually in a later phase of the project, systematic human-in-the-loop (HIL) experiments simulating AV-HV-Pedestrian and AV-HV interactions will be conducted to probe expectancies, expectancy violations, and safety impacts.

Language

  • English

Project

  • Status: Active
  • Funding: $150000
  • Contract Numbers:

    69A3552348305

  • Sponsor Organizations:

    Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

    University Transportation Centers Program
    Department of Transportation
    Washington, DC  United States  20590
  • Managing Organizations:

    University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute

    2901 Baxter Road
    Ann Arbor, Michigan  United States  48109
  • Project Managers:

    Stearns, Amy

    Bezzina, Debra

  • Performing Organizations:

    University of Wisconsin, Madison

    Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
    1415 Engineering Drive
    Madison, WI  United States  53706
  • Principal Investigators:

    Noyce, David

    Chen, Sikai

    Ahn, Soyoung

    Chitturi, Madhav

  • Start Date: 20240901
  • Expected Completion Date: 20250831
  • Actual Completion Date: 0
  • USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01929668
  • Record Type: Research project
  • Source Agency: Center for Connected and Automated Transportation
  • Contract Numbers: 69A3552348305
  • Files: UTC, RIP
  • Created Date: Sep 5 2024 5:04PM