DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. announced Tuesday it's seeking an industry collaboration to establish a unified way for self-driving cars to talk to pedestrians in a straightforward and simple manner.
Automakers have been experimenting with different signals and screens to replace what humans do with eye contact and informal hand gestures. But they're quickly realizing they might leave their fellow road users bewildered if they all take separate approaches.
Standards bodies are examining the subject, but any recommendations may be years away. With leading automakers and tech companies planning launches of self-driving vehicles in the not-too-distant future, Ford is urging the industry to quickly find common ground.
The company said the group will operate under a memorandum of understanding, and Ford says it will share its learnings and technologies with others developing Level 4 automated systems -- self-driving systems that don't call for human interaction behind the wheel. Already, Ford executives say they've received interest from others in joining.
"We all want to avoid having multiple implementations of signals launched in the same space that look different, operate differently, so that, to me, is why we think this is quite urgent right now," John Shutko, Ford's human factors technical specialist for self-driving vehicles, told Automotive News. "If we have a few different systems, it's going to cause confusion. It could cause some municipalities to reject the cars. There could be advocacy groups that say, 'There's too much confusion. Get these out of here.' So we need to act quickly."
Though Ford is open to changing its designs in a potential collaboration, it already has spent considerable time addressing these communications. Shutko and his team have spent three years conducting research, resulting in the development of a horizontal screen affixed to the top of a windshield, which communicates a vehicle's state in three basic ways: A steady, white rectangle indicates a vehicle is moving. Two converging white rectangles indicate a vehicle is yielding or stopping. A rapidly pulsating white rectangle indicates that a vehicle is about to begin moving.
Prototypes installed