Wearing Awareness: Designing Pedestrian-Wearables for Interactions with Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

Fully autonomous vehicles (AVs) are said to become part of our streets, however, their introduction raises certain challenges for vulnerable road users when it comes to making confident street-crossing decisions. To mitigate such concerns, researchers have proposed novel external human-machine interfaces (eHMI) that transmit vehicle intent and awareness information to pedestrians. However, many proposed eHMIs are limited to being deployed on vehicles or street infrastructures, and therefore offer limited opportunities to provide more personal forms of feedback to diverse pedestrians. In this work, we introduce a new category of eHMIs, pedestrian-wearables, which include clothing- and accessories-based devices that provide information about AVs directly to pedestrians. We report on a study wherein participants proposed designs for pedestrian-wearables that provide relevant alerts to wearers and help them make safer street-crossing decisions. Informed by our participants' designs, we discuss three main facets of pedestrian-wearables: their perceived strengths and potential for inclusiveness and social acceptability.