AUTHOR=Holländer Kai , Hoggenmüller Marius , Gruber Romy , Völkel Sarah Theres , Butz Andreas 

TITLE=Take It to the Curb: Scalable Communication Between Autonomous Cars and Vulnerable Road Users Through Curbstone Displays

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Computer Science

VOLUME=4

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/computer-science/articles/10.3389/fcomp.2022.844245

DOI=10.3389/fcomp.2022.844245

ISSN=2624-9898

ABSTRACT=<p>Automated driving will require new approaches to the communication between vehicles and vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as pedestrians, e.g., through external human–machine interfaces (eHMIs). However, the majority of eHMI concepts are neither scalable (i.e., take into account complex traffic scenarios with multiple vehicles and VRUs), nor do they optimize traffic flow. Speculating on the upgrade of traffic infrastructure in the automated city, we propose <italic>Smart Curbs</italic>, a scalable communication concept integrated into the curbstone. Using a combination of immersive and non-immersive prototypes, we evaluated the suitability of our concept for complex urban environments in a user study (<italic>N</italic> = 18). Comparing the approach to a projection-based eHMI, our findings reveal that Smart Curbs are safer to use, as our participants spent less time on the road when crossing. Based on our findings, we discuss the potential of Smart Curbs to mitigate the scalability problem in AV-pedestrian communication and simultaneously enhance traffic flow.</p>