Audio-visual perception of vehicles in traffic, phase 2

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In the second phase of AUDICTIVE, our project continues to investigate the role of auditory perception and cognition for safe mobility, by studying judgments of time-to-collision (TTC; "When will the vehicle arrive at my position?") and street-crossing decisions from a pedestrian's perspective. For this, we use the interactive and realistic audio-visual virtual-reality simulations of electric and conventional vehicles approaching pedestrians in a street-crossing scenario that were implemented in the first phase, and we will refine and extend the simulations systems. The objective of work package (WP) A is to understand the perceptual mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of the sound of accelerating vehicles with internal combustion engine (ICE) on TTC estimation and street-crossing decisions that were consistently observed in phase 1. WP B investigates the auditory perception of distance, velocity, and acceleration, for the specific case of approaching vehicles. The aim is to explain the cue weights in TTC estimation and street-crossing decisions observed in project phase 1 and in WP A based on the auditory sensitivity in the basic tasks, and conditional on the availability of different acoustic cues. Because the results of phase 1 showed a significantly smaller benefit of the sound of accelerating electric vehicles, even with acoustic vehicle alerting system (AVAS), WP C investigates how AVAS designs can be improved so that they provide acceleration information as effectively as the sound of an ICE vehicle. Plausibility of the traffic situations and events, which are portrayed within an immersive virtual reality system, can play an important role on the traffic safety and sound quality investigations. Design aspects and the complexity of the VR environment have an influence on the perceived overall plausibility of these virtual-reality-based simulations. The effect of complexity on plausibility ratings and behavior of subjects will be investigated in experiments on TTC-estimation and street-crossing decisions. First, in WP D, the complexity of virtual sound sources is increased by taking into account the directional characteristics of vehicle sub-sources. For this purpose, a new vehicle recording method is developed, based on which new virtual source models are created. WP E focuses on the complexity of scene content, from an empty street to the complexity of a lively street, and the influence of auditory simulation accuracy on plausibility. Finally, WP F investigates the influence of additional technical and social distraction factors on the plausibility evaluation and behavior of the subjects by giving them additional tasks with smartphones or interactions with people during traffic safety experiments.