Ford Motor Company has announced that they will team up with Virginia Tech to perform a study on how self driving cars will communicate with other pedestrians. To prepare for the future, Ford and Virginia Tech will begin to test a Ford-designed method for self-driving vehicles to communicate their intent to pedestrians, human drivers and bicyclists. This experiment plans to develop a standard visual language all people can easily understand.
“Understanding how self-driving vehicles impact the world as we know it today is critical to ensuring we’re creating the right experience for tomorrow,” said John Shutko, Ford’s human factors technical specialist. “We need to solve for the challenges presented by not having a human driver, so designing a way to replace the head nod or hand wave is fundamental to ensuring safe and efficient operation of self-driving vehicles in our communities.”
When autonomous vehicles take to the road, hand waves and head nods between drivers and pedestrians will no longer exist. As part of Ford’s efforts to ensure that autonomous vehicles will be able to safely share the roads with humans, they have designed light patterns to signal what self-driving cars plan to do next.
To do this, Ford outfitted a Transit Connect van with a light bar positioned on the windshield. To simulate a fully self-driving experience without having to use an actual autonomous vehicle, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute team created method to conceal the driver with a “seat suit.”
The suit is able to create the illusion of a self-driving vehicle. The researchers then were able to create three light signals that can safely communicate the car’s intent to other drivers and pedestrians:
Yield: Two white lights that move side to side, indicating vehicle is about to yield to a full stop
Active autonomous driving mode: Solid white light to indicate vehicle is driving autonomously
Start to go: Rapidly blinking white light to indicate vehicle is beginning to accelerate from a stop
"This work is of value not only to vehicle users and manufacturers, but also to anyone who walks, rides or drives alongside autonomous vehicles in the future,” said Andy Schaudt, project director, Center for Automated Vehicle Systems, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. “We are proud to support Ford in developing this important research.”
Ford is working hard on creating a common visual communication interface for the public to understand, that will ensure self-driving cars safe assimilation to public roads. Ford is also working on ways to communicate with those who are blind or visually impaired as part of a separate work stream.