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Australia is seen as a leader in the development and adoption of driverless cars. Australia’s Smart Cities Plan highlights that their transformational impact will “fundamentally change how we live and work”. Driverless cars and other autonomous vehicles have the potential to contribute to the strategic goals of Australian cities, addressing sustainability and liveability through shared ownership models and reduced congestion.

Recently completed, this project explored questions of how to make autonomous vehicles sympathetic to the social life of the urban spaces they inhabit, a factor often overlooked in much of the research on autonomous vehicles. It tackled this challenge by developing new understandings about how autonomous vehicles interact with people around them, and how this is linked to perceived trust and safety.The project developed interfaces for communicating the state and intent of autonomous vehicles to pedestrians and validated the use of virtual reality simulators to test how people interact with vehicles.

Project findings provide evidence for autonomous vehicle trials and guidance on when to use hyperreal prototypes and when to use computer-generated environments when testing the impact of autonomous vehicles on other road users. This knowledge has the potential to re­duce the risk of accidents from pedestrians misinterpreting the intention of the vehicle and to improve public perceptions.