Shared-space interactions between people and autonomous vehicles

The project investigates whether people are more likely to trust the technology and feel safe if they are able to understand how the system makes decisions and to directly influence its behaviour.

About the project

The project delivers a key component for the success of robotic applications in cities: It develops critical understanding about how autonomous vehicles in urban environments need to interact with the people that they share those spaces with. Australia’s world-leading position in mining robotics offers a unique first-mover advantage for Australia to lead the development of autonomous vehicle technology, a market estimated to increase to $348 billion globally within the next 10 years.

Beyond the domain of driverless cars, autonomous vehicle technology enables new applications, such as transport pods, delivery droids and maintenance robots. The benefits of these kinds of vehicles, which can operate in shared spaces, such as pedestrian zones, include mobility for people with disabilities, delivery of goods in areas that are not accessible by cars and more efficient maintenance of urban infrastructure.

The project contributes to Australia’s Smart Cities Plan, which outlines the impact of autonomous vehicles, and the Transport for NSW Future Transport 2056 Strategy, which prioritises “places for people”.

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More about the project

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Design at Sydney

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Project objectives

Autonomous vehicles that are able to operate in shared spaces, such as campuses and pedestrian zones, promise to improve urban life. However, their uptake depends heavily on public acceptance as they operate in close proximity to people.

The project investigates whether people are more likely to trust the technology and feel safe if they are able to understand how the system makes decisions and to directly influence its behaviour. It has three overarching aims:

To identify which decision-making processes AVs in shared spaces should communicate to pedestrians and in what ways.
To create interaction techniques for pedestrians to directly influence the behaviour of AVs in shared spaces.
To develop strategies for safely testing the interaction between multiple pedestrians and AVs in simulated virtual environments.

Project team

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Professor Simon Marvin, University of Sydney

Professor Martin Tomitsch, University of Technology Sydney

Tram Tran, University of Sydney

Yiyuan Wang, University of Sydney

Shuyao Dai, University of Sydney

Geoffrey Lazarus, University of Sydney

The project is funded through the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project (DP) scheme under the number DP220102019.

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The University of Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning