Looming silhouette: an approaching visual stimulus device for pedestrians to avoid collisions

Abstract

We are exposed daily to the risk of collision at numerous blind intersections. To avoid the risk of collision, we propose a system that elicits an "approaching sensation" by presenting a visual stimulus. Possible factors for the approaching sensation are the "expansion" and "motion" of a silhouette. We compared the effects of these two factors on the approaching sensation and found that to elicit an approaching sensation, the expansion factor is important, and the motion factor has a certain effect in alarming pedestrians. On the base of this result, we produced a system that presents an expanding and moving silhouette of an approaching pedestrian to the pedestrians user.