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Digital Replica for Trustworthy Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles

Trust in an automated system can be defined as confidence in a vehicle's reliability, safety, and predictability, which is essential for the acceptance and widespread adoption of fully autonomous vehicles (FAVs); without it, users might disengage from using autonomous vehicles or reject the technolo...

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Main Author: Farahat, Hady
Format: Thesis
Published: AUC Knowledge Fountain 2026
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access_status_str Open Access
author Farahat, Hady
author_browse Farahat, Hady
author_facet Farahat, Hady
author_sort Farahat, Hady
collection Thesis
description Trust in an automated system can be defined as confidence in a vehicle's reliability, safety, and predictability, which is essential for the acceptance and widespread adoption of fully autonomous vehicles (FAVs); without it, users might disengage from using autonomous vehicles or reject the technology altogether. Most of the previous research has focused on trust from an ego vehicle perspective. However, next-generation vehicles are becoming more autonomous and connected, relying on vehicle-to-vehicle technology and vehicle-to-infrastructure technology with no human intervention. Hence, trust becomes more complex and fragile as multiple agents interact with each other, and it might become harder to establish due to unexpected inter-vehicle coordination, diminishing human control, limited system transparency, and generalization effects where users might transfer their trust or distrust from one system to another. In such a complex environment, trust has to exceed ego vehicles and take into account other autonomous vehicles and their coordination abilities. This thesis hypothesizes that providing the user with more information regarding the environmental state, including information about ego vehicle intentions, other autonomous vehicles' intentions, cooperation agreements, and road conditions, can foster trust not only toward ego vehicles but also toward other cooperative robotic road users. This can be reached by visualizing vehicle-to-everything information through augmented reality interfaces. To test this, a within-subjects experiment was conducted in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment. A customized DReyeVR simulator was utilized to develop a digital replica, which enables the simultaneous mimicking of vehicle behavior, algorithms, and user interface within a VR setup. Participants experienced three interfaces: (A) no transparency, (B) system-level transparency showing Only the ego vehicle's intentions, and (C) environment-level transparency displaying cooperation intention, planned path by other vehicles, and infrastructure information. The results indicate that the interface that offered environment-level transparency at the cost of a higher mental effort enhanced trust in the ego vehicle and cooperating fully autonomous vehicles (FAVs). These results provide insight for designing interfaces for cooperative autonomous vehicles, fostering trust toward other cooperative agents, and preventing users' disengagement from the technology.
format Thesis
id oai:fount.aucegypt.edu:etds-3624
institution American University in Cairo (Egypt)
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:35:56.457Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from AUC Knowledge Fountain — bepress
publishDate 2026
publishDateRange 2026
publishDateSort 2026
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spelling oai:fount.aucegypt.edu:etds-3624 Digital Replica for Trustworthy Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles Farahat, Hady Trust in an automated system can be defined as confidence in a vehicle's reliability, safety, and predictability, which is essential for the acceptance and widespread adoption of fully autonomous vehicles (FAVs); without it, users might disengage from using autonomous vehicles or reject the technology altogether. Most of the previous research has focused on trust from an ego vehicle perspective. However, next-generation vehicles are becoming more autonomous and connected, relying on vehicle-to-vehicle technology and vehicle-to-infrastructure technology with no human intervention. Hence, trust becomes more complex and fragile as multiple agents interact with each other, and it might become harder to establish due to unexpected inter-vehicle coordination, diminishing human control, limited system transparency, and generalization effects where users might transfer their trust or distrust from one system to another. In such a complex environment, trust has to exceed ego vehicles and take into account other autonomous vehicles and their coordination abilities. This thesis hypothesizes that providing the user with more information regarding the environmental state, including information about ego vehicle intentions, other autonomous vehicles' intentions, cooperation agreements, and road conditions, can foster trust not only toward ego vehicles but also toward other cooperative robotic road users. This can be reached by visualizing vehicle-to-everything information through augmented reality interfaces. To test this, a within-subjects experiment was conducted in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment. A customized DReyeVR simulator was utilized to develop a digital replica, which enables the simultaneous mimicking of vehicle behavior, algorithms, and user interface within a VR setup. Participants experienced three interfaces: (A) no transparency, (B) system-level transparency showing Only the ego vehicle's intentions, and (C) environment-level transparency displaying cooperation intention, planned path by other vehicles, and infrastructure information. The results indicate that the interface that offered environment-level transparency at the cost of a higher mental effort enhanced trust in the ego vehicle and cooperating fully autonomous vehicles (FAVs). These results provide insight for designing interfaces for cooperative autonomous vehicles, fostering trust toward other cooperative agents, and preventing users' disengagement from the technology. 2026-01-31T08:00:00Z thesis application/pdf https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/2571 https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3624/viewcontent/Digital_Replica_for_Trustworthy_Cooperative_Autonomous_Vehicles.pdf Theses and Dissertations AUC Knowledge Fountain Autonomous Vehicles Augmented Reality Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) Passenger Trust Ergonomics Robotics
spellingShingle Autonomous Vehicles
Augmented Reality
Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X)
Passenger Trust
Ergonomics
Robotics
Farahat, Hady
Digital Replica for Trustworthy Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles
title Digital Replica for Trustworthy Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles
title_full Digital Replica for Trustworthy Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles
title_fullStr Digital Replica for Trustworthy Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles
title_full_unstemmed Digital Replica for Trustworthy Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles
title_short Digital Replica for Trustworthy Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles
title_sort digital replica for trustworthy cooperative autonomous vehicles
topic Autonomous Vehicles
Augmented Reality
Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X)
Passenger Trust
Ergonomics
Robotics
url https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/2571
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3624/viewcontent/Digital_Replica_for_Trustworthy_Cooperative_Autonomous_Vehicles.pdf
work_keys_str_mv AT farahathady digitalreplicafortrustworthycooperativeautonomousvehicles