Communication strategies for automated merging in dense traffic

The aim to integrate automated vehicles in manual traffic motivates the investigation of the communication of road users. Especially in situations of high traffic density, an automated lane change without cooperation of interacting traffic participants cannot be executed. Therefore, an automated vehicle needs a distinct interpretable strategy to inform interacting road users of its intention. In this presented driving study, different variations to announce a lane change to interacting traffic are performed on a test track and are evaluated (with 40 participants) in a within-subjects design. To gain standardized situations, all lane change maneuvers are executed automatically. During the study, different factors to announce a lane change, like the time to set the indicator, a weak or strong deceleration to the target gap or a lateral offset in advance of the lane change are investigated. Moreover, the influence of the lane change direction as well as the velocity of the target gap are analysed. The study illustrates that not only an indicator is crucial to announce a lane change. Also a strong deceleration to the target gap influences the processing of the information and cooperation of interacting traffic participants. Other factors, such as a lateral offset in advance of a lane change is evaluated as less important. In addition, the study implies higher cooperation and an influence of the lane change direction at slow velocities.