Yikes, a driverless car! Well, not exactly ...
PEDESTRIANS are getting a peek into a future of driverless cars – with a little help from a camouflaged ‘seat suit’.
Ford has designed the suit to trick people into thinking there’s no driver at the wheel of the car. The driver wears a fake headrest over his face and his torso is behind a custom-sewn upholstery cover.
The bizarre sight was part of a test to see how pedestrians react to seeing driverless cars. Ford wants to create a way for selfdriving vehicles to communicate their movements visually to pedestrians, cyclists and human drivers.
The method, which uses simple light signals from the car roof to depict whether the vehicle is slowing or accelerating, has the potential to become a universal industry standard, the researchers said.
Ford set out to find ‘a way to replace the head nod or hand wave’ to convey to pedestrians the intent of a driverless vehicle. Researchers rejected the use of displayed text because of potential language barriers, and symbols because of their low recognition.
Instead, they settled on visual signals from a light bar placed on the windscreen of a Ford Transit van. A solid white light shows the vehicle is in full autonomous mode, a blinking white light indicates acceleration and a pair of white lights moving side to side signal slowing and stopping. The specially outfitted van logged 1,800 miles in August, much of it in Arlington, Virginia.