A Pedestrian Simulator for Urban Crossing Scenarios

In order to evaluate critical urban road crossing scenarios from the point of view of a pedestrian in a safe and reproducible manner, a setup for a pedestrian simulator - analog to a driving simulator - was elaborated using a head-mounted display, a motion capture system and a driving simulator software (for the virtual environment). This paper explains the motivation for such a simulator and delineates the integrated components. Further, a first small-scale study was conducted, delivering insights into the acceptance of the technical setup and the perception of the virtual environment, followed by a larger study evaluating the subjective immersiveness of the simulator using the Presence Questionnaire (PQ) in the case of a gap-acceptance study. The participants were asked to cross the virtual road on two different conditions: an easy and a difficult scenario, varying the density and velocity of passing vehicles. The comparison of the PQ scores of these two conditions revealed no significant difference neither regarding the total PQ score nor its factors, suggesting no influence of the traffic density/velocity on the user's immersive impression. The discussion provides a lookout for possible improvements regarding the setup and further studies.