Scott Pendleton

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Scott Pendleton is a leading researcher in autonomous vehicle (AV) interaction, focusing on the critical interface between self-driving cars and pedestrians. His work pioneers methods for AVs to communicate their perception and intent to surrounding humans, effectively treating vehicles as social robots. Pendleton’s most impactful contribution, the 2016 paper "Pedestrian Notification Methods in Autonomous Vehicles for Multi-Class Mobility-on-Demand Service" (54 citations), introduces the use of Light-Emitting Diode (LED) strips to convey a vehicle’s awareness of pedestrians. This foundational research, extended in his 2015 work on self-driving golfcarts (6 citations), demonstrates how simple visual cues can build trust and engagement, solving the "acknowledgment gap" left by the absence of a human driver. His 2016 paper on scalable cooperative localization (7 citations) further showcases his versatility in sensor systems. By humanizing autonomous technology, Pendleton’s work directly shapes how future mobility services will safely and intuitively interact with people, making him a key figure in the development of socially-aware autonomous systems.