Man Dresses as a Car Seat in the Name of Self-Driving Science

[Narrator] Delivering on the dream of self-driving cars

requires a lot,

endless road testing, computer modeling,

and robotics expertise,

and sometimes dressing up as a car seat to spook teens.

This man is no mischief maker.

He's part of a study into how humans

can interact with driverless vehicles.

The research, funded by Ford

and run by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute

in August, may seem silly,

but it's an effort to answer a key question.

How should self-driving cars

communicate with the people around them?

Eliminating the driver eliminates the visual cues,

eye contact, a wave of the hand, an extended middle finger,

that human drivers use to interact with pedestrians,

cyclists, and others on city streets.

Studying this is tricky

because everyone testing robo-cars on public streets

puts an engineer behind the wheel,

to ensure the car doesn't do something stupid.

Thus, the human driver

disguised to look like he's not actually there.

For this study, the researchers hooked up their Ford van

with a light display and a new code of the road.

Two white lights moving side-to-side

means the car will stop.

A rapidly-blinking white light

means it's about to start up again.

The idea, Ford says,

is to create a new international language of sorts,

or at least an industry standard

for autonomous car communications.

The researchers collected 150 hours

and 1,800 miles of driving data.

Now they'll crunch the numbers

to discover if they've hit on the Esperanto of AVs.

Even if nothing comes of this study,

at least they've got a sweet Halloween costume.

(playful jazz music)