Self driving Surprising

Self-driving cars fitted with large animated eyes could prevent road accidents, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University in Japan attached robotic eyes to the front of a golf cart in order to test whether pedestrians made safer decisions when crossing the road.

The manually-controlled eyes were designed to indicate whether or not the autonomous system had registered the presence of the pedestrian, and therefore was slowing down or stopping.

If the car is not looking at the pedestrian, this implies that the car does not recognize the pedestrian. Thus, pedestrians can judge that they should not cross the street, thereby avoiding potential traffic accidents,” the researchers wrote in a recently published study, titled ‘Can eyes on a car reduce traffic accidents?’

“The results showed that the eyes can reduce potential traffic accidents and that gaze direction can increase pedestrians’ subjective feelings of safety and danger.”

The idea was to create an artificial replacement for eye contact, which can be a crucial means of communication between drivers and pedestrians when avoiding potentially dangerous situations.

The presence of the animated eyes also signalled to the pedestrians that the car was not being driven by a human, which could potentially better inform their street-crossing decisions.