5 Risk Analysis for Vehicle–Pedestrian Interaction with Extended Sensing

In this work, we introduce the concept of extended sensing (ES) and provide a comparison tool that evaluates the risk for vehicle-pedestrian interaction (VPI) scenarios by performing statistical analysis of the number of hazardous situations encountered when there is occlusion (without communication) versus using a sensing technology that informs the vehicle of the presence of a potentially occluded pedestrian. The extended sensor can be a camera on a pole or a pedestrian self-sending a warning signal. The risk analysis is performed using the backtracking process algorithm, which has been used in previous works, as a way to provide sufficient coverage of the operational design domain. Qualitative and quantitative simulation results show the benefits of having ES (in this case, an external pedestrian alert system) to decrease the possibility of collision. The proposed method also proves to be useful to evaluate the risk for VPI scenarios, in general.