  One of the primary impediments hindering the widespread acceptance of
autonomous vehicles (AVs) among pedestrians is their limited comprehension of
AVs. This study employs virtual reality (VR) to provide pedestrians with an
immersive environment for engaging with and comprehending AVs during unmarked
midblock multilane crossings. Diverse AV driving behaviors were modeled to
exhibit negotiation behavior with a yellow signal indication or non-yielding
behavior with a blue signal indication. This paper aims to investigate the
impact of various factors, such as AV behavior and signaling, pedestrian past
behavior, etc., on pedestrians' perception change of AVs. Before and after the
VR experiment, participants completed surveys assessing their perception of
AVs, focusing on two main aspects: "Attitude" and "System Effectiveness." The
Wilcoxon signed-rank test results demonstrated that both pedestrians' overall
attitude score toward AVs and trust in the effectiveness of AV systems
significantly increased following the VR experiment. Notably, individuals who
exhibited a greater trust in the yellow signals were more inclined to display a
higher attitude score toward AVs and to augment their trust in the
effectiveness of AV systems. This indicates that the design of the yellow
signal instills pedestrians with greater confidence in their interactions with
AVs. Further, pedestrians who exhibit more aggressive crossing behavior are
less likely to change their perception towards AVs as compared to those
pedestrians with more positive crossing behaviors. It is concluded that
integrating this paper's devised AV behavior and signaling within an immersive
VR setting facilitated pedestrian engagement with AVs, thereby changing their
perception of AVs.
