A World Economic Forum study says many consumers are hesitant to try or purchase autonomous vehicles due to safety, control, and faulty behavior concerns. Because of this, FAU’s Mehrdad Nojoumian used a virtual reality simulation to test trust between humans and self-driving cars.

“Our simulation approach is helping us to understand how the human mind goes from one specific trust-state to another one in a sequence of events as we gauge various levels of trust and distrust in real-time,” says Nojoumian. The results show that aggressive autonomous driving diminishes trust, while defensive autonomous driving builds trust.

• Mehrdad Nojoumian