Towards game theoretic AV controllers: measuring pedestrian behaviour in Virtual Reality

Understanding pedestrian interaction is of great importance for autonomous vehicles (AVs). The present study investigates pedestrian behaviour during crossing scenarios with an autonomous vehicle using Virtual Reality. The self-driving car is driven by a game theoretic controller which adapts its driving style to pedestrian crossing behaviour. We found that subjects value collision avoidance about 8 times more than saving 0.02 seconds. A previous lab study found time saving to be more important than collision avoidance in a highly unrealistic board game style version of the game. The present result suggests that the VR simulation reproduces real world road-crossings better than the lab study and provides a reliable test-bed for the development of game theoretic models or AVs.