It’s hoped self-driving cars will make roads safer for their passengers, but what about pedestrians? Japanese scientists have recently experimented with one way of protecting people on foot – adding big eyes.
When you’re deciding whether to cross the road, like at a pedestrian crossing, it helps to know whether approaching drivers have seen you. But what if the car is in control?
These researchers created simple robotic eyes which could move left and right, and put them on the front of a golf cart. They then ran an experiment (in virtual reality so no-one got hurt) where they asked participants if they would cross the road in front of the modified cart.
Sometimes, it ‘looked’ at pedestrians to show it had seen them. If it hadn’t, the eyes stayed pointed away. This made it easier for pedestrians to predict whether the cart was going to stop for them not. Maybe one day, all cars will have googly-looking eyes on the front – for safety.
This article was published in Issue 62 of Double Helix magazine (https://www.csiro.au/en/Education/Double-Helix). Copyright for this article is held by CSIRO.
Lachlan Writes Science 