Analysis of Driver and Pedestrian Gesture Use in the Boston Area. Automated Vehicles May Need More Than Kinematics in Ambiguous Situations
Şahin İppoliti, Hatice and Weibert, Alexander and Manstetten, Dietrich and Reimer, Bryan and Gershon, Pnina and Mehler, Bruce L and Abdenebaoui, Larbi
Adjunct Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications
Roadways, despite their formal regulations, are dynamic spaces where humans interact beyond formal rules to resolve conflicts. In ambiguous situations, the right of way is often unclear. Self-driving vehicles in urban traffic introduce challenges to their coexistence with humans, indicating a need for greater social awareness in these vehicles. To investigate social interactions among roadway users, we analyzed a naturalistic driving dataset focusing on instances where drivers yielded to pedestrians, by noting gestures. Video analysis showed that gestures were more common in ambiguous situations than in regulated scenarios. Drivers used gestures to navigate the right of way efficiently, while pedestrians used them to express gratitude. These findings highlight the importance of understanding social expressions in designing socially aware self-driving vehicles.
October / 2025
inproceedings
Association for Computing Machinery
AutomotiveUI '25 Adjunct
262-267
OFFIS Autoren
