Interaction autonomous vehicle - pedestrian: dynamic vehicle behaviour as a function of subjective safety perception

In this work we propose to change the dynamic of an autonomous vehicle as the main form of giving a reassuring feedback to a would-be crossing pedestrian. The subjective perception of the safeness of a crossing should be always taken into consideration, and we propose to associate it to the different classes of pedestrian vulnerability. In order to define a dynamic for each class of pedestrians, we propose to assess their safety perception while crossing in the presence of a self-driving vehicle. Besides more conventional self-assessment questionnaires, we here propose to also rely on physiological responses to evaluate the emotional and affective state of pedestrians during the interaction with an autonomous vehicle. To this end we have designed an experiment in a controlled urban-like crossing environment and we have prepared a proper self-driving vehicle.