Each seminar highlights a different speaker who will discuss their latest research projects, cutting-edge technology or what is happening within certain technological industries. These industries include biomedical technologies or microsystems, assistive technologies, automation and intelligent systems, unmanned systems, advanced manufacturing and composite materials.
Topic
Pedestrian Safety in the Presence of Self-Driving Vehicles: Virtual Reality Experiment
Abstract
Virtual reality (VR) has proven to be a useful tool for conducting human factors research in interface design. With the development and promotion of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology, researchers are focusing on designing different types of interfaces to induce trust in road users toward this new technology. The goals of this research were to use VR to investigate pedestrians’ understanding of proposed designs of external features on AVs and to explore how the presence of an operator inside the vehicle influences pedestrians’ preference for these features. VR headset tracking, survey-based responses, and video-recorded body movements were used to collect data on pedestrian responses to three operator statuses and seven feature types. Pedestrians preferred both “walk” in text and verbal message saying “safe to cross” as clear and comforting features on an AV. They perceived the distracted operator condition as to be an inconvenient situation even for the AV equipped with visual or audible features. Older people found the features more helpful and people with higher innovativeness rated the feature ideas with higher ratings.
Bio
Dr. Shuchisnigdha Deb is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering at The University of Texas at Arlington. Dr. Deb has graduated from Mississippi State University with her Doctoral degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering. Her research focuses on Human-Technology Interaction. Dr. Deb has been using Simulators, mobile learning environments, and AR/VR to expose people in virtual environments in order to investigate and improve their task performance and behavior.
Date
2/28/2020
Time
12pm – 1pm
Location
7300 Jack Newell Boulevard South
Fort Worth, TX 76118-7115
817-272-5900
http://utari.uta.edu/