Modular virtual reality to enable efficient user studies for autonomous driving

Autonomous driving vehicles use a variety of means to communicate with pedestrians, e.g. information displays, LED panels and sound. In order to evaluate some of those information displays with regard to their efficiency of understanding, the authors examined a set of external information types, such as images, text and animated LED panels. The use of Virtual Reality to create user studies offers a flexible and cost-effective approach for evaluation and improvement, therefore the authors chose to develop the user study as a VR application. This paper describes the ongoing work in which the study is designed and the application has been implemented but the study has not yet been carried out. The emphasis on this paper lies on the approach of planning a modular VR application that fits the needs of a multifactorial experimental layout that can adapt to changes in the study for further evaluation.