Development of an Immersive Simulation Platform to Study Interactions Between Automated Vehicles and Pedestrians

The importance of informal communication between manual vehicles drivers and pedestrians in order to prevent misinterpretation, and thus accidents, in road-crossing situations has been widely shown in the literature. Such crucial communication consequently raises the issue of the introduction of automated vehicles (AVs) on the roads, in which case the status of the driver becomes less obvious. In this paper, we present a novel simulation platform, the V-HCD, allowing the conduct of immersive experimentations, both from the pedestrian's and the driver's point of view. This platform will be used to study the acceptance of the automated vehicle for the European SUaaVE project, and further to support the human-centred design of a future empathic AV.