Ford tests lighting-based visual language to help autonomous vehicle communicate with pedestrians

The automaker conducted similar tests in the United States in 2017.

Ford has teamed up with Germany’s Chemnitz University of Technology, to test a new approach for self-driving vehicles to communicate with pedestrians and cyclists, the automaker said in a press release on 6 February. The new method uses light-based signals to indicate what the self-driving vehicle is doing and what it intends to do next. To conduct the tests, the automaker created a "human car seat" inside the test vehicle, a Ford Transit Connect van. Although a driver manually operates the test vehicle, the "human car seat" gives the impression that it is being driven autonomously.