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Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are an emergent technology. The very few studies focusing on how people perceive and react to autonomous vehicles are mainly based on online surveys. Although important, these studies measure people's opinions on AVs, but not their actual reaction when using them. In this paper, we assess users' perceptions of AVs using an immersive virtual reality experiment. We modeled autonomous boats that are intended to be deployed in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We compared users' reactions to manned and unmanned boats in a virtual reality environment. In total, 30 participants were exposed to a Virtual Reality (VR) simulation, where we collected skin conductance data, which was compared with a participant's responses to a questionnaire regarding perceived risk, stress, and trust toward manned and unmanned boats. The study finds that autonomous boats do not substantially influence the experienced stress, trust, or perceived risk in comparison with human-controlled boats. This article also shows the gains that virtual reality can bring to studies of the social appropriation of technologies. Results show the need for objective, quantitative data regarding the societal acceptance toward autonomous systems to better understand how these technologies will be appropriated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are starting to hit our roads. It is only a matter of time until the technological challenges still facing full AV implementation are solved, and legal, social, and transport issues related to AVs become part of the public discussion. AVs have the potential to become a major catalyst for urban transformation. To explore some of these transformations, first, we discuss the possibility of decoupling the many functions of urban vehicles from the form factor (without drivers, do cars need to look like they look today?). Second, we question whether AVs will lead to more or fewer cars on the roads, highlighting the synergies between AVs and ride-sharing schemes. Third, with AVs as part of multimodal and sharing-mobility systems, millions of square kilometers currently used for parking spaces might be liberated, or even change the way we design road space. Fourth, freed from the fatigue related to traffic, we question whether AVs would make people search for home locations farther from cities, increasing urban sprawl, or would rather attract more residents to city centers, also freed from congestion and pollution. Fifth, depending on responses to the previous questions and innovative traffic algorithms, we ask whether AVs will demand more or less road infrastructure. We conclude by suggesting that AVs offer the first opportunity to rethink urban life and city design since cars replaced horse-powered traffic and changed the design of cities for a hundred years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous vehicles will transform urban mobility. However, before being fully implemented, autonomous vehicles will navigate cities in mixed-traffic roads, negotiating traffic with human-driven vehicles. In this work, we simulate a system of autonomous vehicles co-existing with human-driven vehicles, analyzing the consequences of system design choices. The system consists of a network of arterial roads with exclusive lanes for autonomous vehicles where they can travel in platoons. This paper presents the evaluation of this system in realistic scenarios evaluating the impacts of the system on travel time using mesoscopic traffic simulation. We used real data from the metropolis of São Paulo to create the simulation scenarios. The results show that the proposed system would bring reductions to the average travel time of the city commuters and other benefits such as the reduction of the space required to handle all the traffic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]