IALH Research Fellow Sowmya Somanath has co-authored a conference paper entitled Towards Designing Audio Interactions with Autonomous Vehicles: A Hearing-Enhanced Pedestrian Story. Other authors include Ashratuz Zavin Asha, Owen Brierley, Patrick Finn, and Ehud Sharlin. The paper was presented at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2022), New Orleans, LA, USA, April 30, 2022
Abstract:
Smart technologies embedded in autonomous vehicles (AVs) are expected to prevent accidents by reducing human error caused by drivers. However, external communication between pedestrians and AVs is required to ensure improved safety and trust. We define a hearing-enhanced pedestrian (HEP) who depends on electronic aids for everyday living that gives them augmented capabilities. Technology enhancements in modern hearing aids can receive information directly from an AV. We explore new possibilities for AV-HEP interactions using a direct audio link to the hearing aids. In order to understand such interactions, a co-design study was conducted between two researchers of this work. One codesigner has the lived experience of wearing hearing aid enhancements due to hearing impairment. Our work presents preliminary insights on designing potential audio cues to facilitate direct communications between AVs and hearing-enhanced pedestrians. Copyright © 2022 for this paper by its authors.