Autonomous vehicles (AVs) require comprehensive and reliable pedestrian trajectory data to ensure safe operation. However, obtaining data of safety-critical scenarios such as jaywalking and near-collisions, or uncommon agents such as children, disabled pedestrians, and vulnerable road users poses logistical and ethical challenges. This paper evaluates a Virtual Reality (VR) system designed to collect pedestrian trajectory and body pose data in a controlled, low-risk environment. We substantiate the usefulness of such a system through semi-structured interviews with professionals in the AV field, and validate the effectiveness of the system through two empirical studies: a first-person user evaluation involving 62 participants, and a third-person evaluative survey involving 290 respondents. Our findings demonstrate that the VR-based data collection system elicits realistic responses for capturing pedestrian data in safety-critical or uncommon vehicle-pedestrian interaction scenarios.

翻译：自动驾驶车辆（AVs）需要全面可靠的行人轨迹数据以确保安全运行。然而，获取诸如乱穿马路、接近碰撞等安全关键场景的数据，或涉及儿童、残障行人及弱势道路使用者等特殊主体的数据，存在实际部署与伦理层面的挑战。本文评估了一种虚拟现实（VR）系统，该系统旨在受控、低风险环境中采集行人轨迹及身体姿态数据。我们通过对自动驾驶领域专业人士的半结构化访谈，证实了此类系统的实用性；并通过两项实证研究验证了系统的有效性：一项涉及62名参与者的第一人称用户评估，以及一项涉及290名受访者的第三人称评估调查。研究结果表明，该基于VR的数据采集系统能够在安全关键或特殊的车辆-行人交互场景中，有效激发真实反应以捕捉行人数据。