Simulating Multiple Road User Perspectives on Autonomous Vehicle Behaviors

This work presents a system and a study in which we have multiple road users interact simultaneously with an autonomous vehicle (AV) in a virtual reality (VR) environment. We go beyond studying dyadic interactions (e.g., AV-pedestrian or AV-driver) to involve a pedestrian, a human driver, and an AV passenger all jointly interacting with an AV in the same VR scenario. We probed multiple user perspectives with two different prototypes of AV behavior strategies in ambiguous stop-sign intersections. An efficient AV attempts to enter the intersection as soon as it can without collision, while a prosocial AV waits for other road users to pass before proceeding. We recruited 16 three-person groups (N=48), where half interacted with the first AV type and the other half interacted with the second AV type in four different traffic configurations. Our investigation demonstrates that road users in different roles can have diverging preferences and trust levels in the same AV behavior when making joint decisions. Finally, we discuss how our methods and findings can be used to guide further explorations for AV interaction research with multiple agents in different roles.