  Recent studies have investigated new approaches for communicating an
autonomous vehicle's (AV) intent and awareness to pedestrians. This paper adds
to this body of work by presenting the design and evaluation of in-situ
projections on the road. Our design combines common traffic light patterns with
aesthetic visual elements. We describe the iterative design process and the
prototyping methods used in each stage. The final design concept was
represented as a virtual reality simulation and evaluated with 18 participants
in four different street crossing scenarios, which included three scenarios
that simulated various degrees of system errors. We found that different design
elements were able to support participants' confidence in their decision even
when the AV failed to correctly detect their presence. We also identified
elements in our design that needed to be more clearly communicated. Based on
these findings, the paper presents a series of design recommendations for
projection-based communication between AVs and pedestrians.
