Autonomous Vehicle-Pedestrian Interaction Across Cultures: Towards Designing Better External Human Machine Interfaces (eHMIs)

Drivers and pedestrians use various culturally-based non-verbal cues such as head movements, hand gestures, and eye contact when crossing roads. With the absence of a human driver, this communication becomes challenging in autonomous vehicle (AV) - pedestrian interaction. External human-machine interfaces (eHMIs) for AV-pedestrian interaction are being developed based on the research conducted mainly in North America and Europe, where the traffic and pedestrian behavior are very structured and follow the rules. In other cultures (e.g., South Asia), this can be very unstructured (e.g., pedestrians spontaneously crossing the road at non-cross walks is not very uncommon). However, research on investigating cross-cultural differences in AV-Pedestrian interaction is scarce. This research focuses on investigating cross-cultural differences in AV- Pedestrian interaction to gain insights useful for designing better eHMIs. This paper details three cross-cultural studies designed for this purpose, and that will be deployed in two different cultural settings: Sri Lanka and Germany.