Studying the interaction between pedestrian, cyclist and automated vehicle in shared space: A virtual reality co-simulator study.

Shared spaces have attracted growing attention, where multiple vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as pedestrians and cyclists coexist in a harmonious traffic environment. In this study, we designed and implemented a multi-player, multi-modal Virtual Reality (VR) co-simulator that integrates pedestrians and cyclists within the same VR environment. The co-simulator features advanced functionalities, body tracking for pedestrians and cyclists, high-quality digital human representations, and comprehensive data collection technologies such as eye-tracking. A VR experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the VR co-simulator and investigate the interactions between VRUs and automated vehicles (AVs) in shared spaces. The experiment also examined the impact of VRU combinations and initial relative positions on the interactions between VRUs and AVs in shared space. The observed decreases in negotiation time and AV-gazing time when pedestrians cross together suggest that mutual awareness and implicit coordination within a pair play a crucial role in making the crossing decisions. The assessment demonstrated the co-simulator's capabilities and feasibility in terms of simulator sickness, presence, realism. The results show that the developed VR co-simulator not only unifies the previous separate VR road user simulators, but also improves the presence and realism of VR experiments for multi-player settings.