Three Strategies for Autonomous Car-to-Pedestrian Communication

Abstract

With autonomous cars being released into the wild, the question is how they integrate with conventional participants in traffic, such as pedestrians. For accident-free traffic, it is necessary for autonomous cars to interact, collaborate, and negotiate with other agents. Knowledge from social robots provides a valuable source for new interaction paradigms for autonomous cars. We raise the question of how autonomous cars communicate their intentions to pedestrians and negotiate in conflict situations. We discuss the scenario and present three possible communication strategies that are informed from human-robot interaction (HRI).