Aiming for a society where humans and automated vehicles can coexist cooperatively, understanding what constitutes cooperative and trustworthy behaviour is essential to designing automated vehicle controllers that enable the integration of highly automated vehicles into the real world. This study investigates how merging vehicles can gain trust from human-driven vehicles in a congested merging situation that requires explicit and implicit communication. Specifically, this study examines how the different behaviours of merging vehicles in the preparatory phase of the merge affect perceived trust from the perspective of the host vehicle in the mainstream lane. The findings suggest that transparent longitudinal positioning could improve the chance of successful merging, and cooperative deceleration during merging preparation could enhance the trust perceived by the host vehicle. Furthermore, the results reveal that, in time-sensitive situations where the merging vehicle approaches a lane closing point, prompt and decisive action of the merging vehicle encourages establishing trust with the host vehicle; any delay or hesitation can result in a lower level of trust. The results can provide valuable insights towards developing collaborative automated vehicles that improve safety and efficiency in real-world traffic situations that involve humans.

翻译：为实现人类与自动驾驶车辆协同共生的社会目标，理解何为合作性与可信赖行为，对于设计能推动高级自动驾驶车辆融入真实世界的控制器至关重要。本研究针对需要显式与隐式沟通的拥堵并线场景，探究并线车辆如何获得人类驾驶车辆的信任。具体而言，研究聚焦于并线准备阶段中，并线车辆的不同行为如何影响主车道目标车辆所感知的信任程度。结果表明，透明的纵向定位可提高并线成功率，而并线准备阶段的协同减速能增强目标车辆的信任感知。此外，研究揭示，在并线车辆接近车道封闭点的时间敏感情境下，其及时果断的动作有助于与目标车辆建立信任；任何延迟或犹豫均会降低信任水平。该研究结果为开发能够提升真实交通场景中涉及人类的安全与效率的协作式自动驾驶车辆提供了重要启示。