ABSTRACT

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are an emergent technology. The very few studies focusing on how people perceive and react to autonomous vehicles are mainly based on online surveys. Although important, these studies measure people‘s opinions on AVs, but not their actual reaction when using them. In this paper, we assess users‘ perceptions of AVs using an immersive virtual reality experiment. We modeled autonomous boats that are intended to be deployed in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We compared users‘ reactions to manned and unmanned boats in a virtual reality environment. In total, 30 participants were exposed to a Virtual Reality (VR) simulation, where we collected skin conductance data, which was compared with a participant's responses to a questionnaire regarding perceived risk, stress, and trust toward manned and unmanned boats. The study finds that autonomous boats do not substantially influence the experienced stress, trust, or perceived risk in comparison with human-controlled boats. This article also shows the gains that virtual reality can bring to studies of the social appropriation of technologies. Results show the need for objective, quantitative data regarding the societal acceptance toward autonomous systems to better understand how these technologies will be appropriated.

摘要

自动驾驶汽车 (AV) 是一项新兴技术。很少有研究关注人们对自动驾驶汽车的看法和反应，主要基于在线调查。尽管很重要，但这些研究衡量的是人们对自动驾驶汽车的看法，而不是他们在使用时的实际反应。在本文中，我们使用沉浸式虚拟现实实验评估用户对 AV 的看法。我们模拟了打算部署在荷兰阿姆斯特丹的自动驾驶船。我们在虚拟现实环境中比较了用户对有人和无人船的反应。总共有 30 名参与者接受了虚拟现实 (VR) 模拟，在那里我们收集了皮肤电导数据，并将其与参与者对有关对有人和无人驾驶船只的感知风险、压力和信任度的问卷的回答进行了比较。该研究发现，与人工控制的船只相比，自动驾驶船只不会显着影响所经历的压力、信任或感知风险。本文还展示了虚拟现实可以为技术的社会挪用研究带来的收益。结果表明，需要关于社会对自主系统的接受程度的客观、定量数据，以更好地了解如何使用这些技术。