[论文解读] Personal space of autonomous car's passengers sitting in the driver's seat

Éléonore Ferrier-Barbut, Dominique Vaufreydaz+3 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|May 9, 2018

Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts参考文献 25被引用 12

一句话总结

本研究通过虚拟现实技术探究自动驾驶汽车周围的个人空间，发现车辆周围存在一个0.2米的舒适区，当该区域被侵入时会引发不适感，且该现象与碰撞风险无关。该舒适区主要存在于车辆行驶时，表明车辆被视为乘客身体的延伸，且不受横向位置或行人数量的影响。

ABSTRACT

This article deals with the specific context of an autonomous car navigating in an urban center within a shared space between pedestrians and cars. The driver delegates the control to the autonomous system while remaining seated in the driver's seat. The proposed study aims at giving a first insight into the definition of human perception of space applied to vehicles by testing the existence of a personal space around the car.It aims at measuring proxemic information about the driver's comfort zone in such conditions.Proxemics, or human perception of space, has been largely explored when applied to humans or to robots, leading to the concept of personal space, but poorly when applied to vehicles. In this article, we highlight the existence and the characteristics of a zone of comfort around the car which is not correlated to the risk of a collision between the car and other road users. Our experiment includes 19 volunteers using a virtual reality headset to look at 30 scenarios filmed in 360{\ extdegree} from the point of view of a passenger sitting in the driver's seat of an autonomous car.They were asked to say "stop" when they felt discomfort visualizing the scenarios.As said, the scenarios voluntarily avoid collision effect as we do not want to measure fear but discomfort.The scenarios involve one or three pedestrians walking past the car at different distances from the wings of the car, relative to the direction of motion of the car, on both sides. The car is either static or moving straight forward at different speeds.The results indicate the existence of a comfort zone around the car in which intrusion causes discomfort.The size of the comfort zone is sensitive neither to the side of the car where the pedestrian passes nor to the number of pedestrians. In contrast, the feeling of discomfort is relative to the car's motion (static or moving).Another outcome from this study is an illustration of the usage of first person 360{\ extdegree} video and a virtual reality headset to evaluate feelings of a passenger within an autonomous car.

研究动机与目标

• 探究自动驾驶汽车周围是否存在超越个体人类邻近行为的个人空间区域。
• 测量该舒适区在共享城市环境中的尺寸与特征。
• 确定该区域是否受车辆运动状态、行人数量或横向位置的影响。
• 评估360° VR视频在评估自动驾驶汽车场景中乘客不适感方面的适用性。
• 探讨车辆的物理形态如何被纳入乘客的身体图式中。

提出的方法

• 通过19名参与者佩戴360°头戴设备进行虚拟现实实验，观看从自动驾驶汽车驾驶员座位拍摄的30个真实世界场景。
• 场景中包含一个或三个行人以不同横向和纵向距离从车辆旁经过，速度分别为0 m/s（静止）和7.5/15 km/h。
• 当参与者感到视觉不适时按下“停止”键，表示其感知的舒适区被侵入。
• 采用第一人称360°视频模拟自动驾驶城市行驶中的真实乘客体验。
• 分析响应数据以基于距离、速度和行人配置识别不适的临界阈值。
• 通过避免存在即时碰撞风险的场景，控制碰撞风险，仅聚焦于不适感的感知。

实验结果

研究问题

• RQ1 是否存在一个围绕自动驾驶汽车的舒适区，其被侵入时会引发不适感，且与碰撞风险无关？
• RQ2 车辆的运动状态（静止与运动）如何影响该舒适区的感知大小与敏感度？
• RQ3 该舒适区在车辆左右两侧是否对称，是否存在侧向偏移？
• RQ4 经过车辆的行人数量是否会影响不适感的阈值？
• RQ5 车辆的车身结构在多大程度上被纳入乘客的个人空间感知中？

主要发现

• 在自动驾驶汽车周围存在一个显著的舒适区，大小约为0.2米，当行人侵入该区域时会引发不适感。
• 舒适区的大小不受行人数量或其横向位置（左侧或右侧）的显著影响。
• 车辆的运动状态（静止与运动）具有显著影响：当车辆行驶时，更易引发不适感，尤其在7.5 km/h时比15 km/h时更明显。
• 未发现显著的性别差异，但存在一种趋势表明女性在1.2米处可能更敏感，尽管该结果未获统计学证实。
• 结果支持车辆被纳入乘客身体图式的假设，即个人空间延伸至车辆的物理边界。
• 360° VR视频的使用被证明在评估乘客不适感方面有效且中性，结果在不同研究中具有一致性，表明其适用于未来研究。