"Text + Eye" on Autonomous Taxi to Provide Geospatial Instructions to Passenger

While text-based external human-machine interface (eHMI) is widely accepted, one limitation is the lack of capability to communicate spatial information such as a different person or location. We built a mixed-eHMI using "eye" as a target-specifier when "text" shows the clear intention to their communication partners. We conducted a pre-experimental observation to develop two testbed scenarios, followed by a video-based user study via life-size projection with a real-car prototype mounted a text display and a set of robotic eyes. The results demonstrated that our proposed "text + eye" combination may represent geospatial information by increasing the success pick-up rate.