Integration of Wearables and Wireless Technologies to Improve the Interaction between Disabled Vulnerable Road Users and Self-Driving Cars

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overall comments:

This is a well-written and well-structured paper describing an approach, and illustrating via simulation, to facilitating communication between disabled vulnerable road users (D-VRUs) and vehicles, specifically autonomous vehicles, utilizing the ITS communication spectrum, specifically the proposed IEEE 802.11p protocol. I only have a few comments to be addressed, which are below.

Typos and minor edits:

Line 29: “by the car” should probably be “by the driver”

Line 390: Table reference needs to be fixed.

Specific comments:

Line 351: Are there privacy concerns here? Broadcasting a disability to the world in this fashion seems like it may be undesirable to many VRUs, especially if there’s no way to control how that broadcast is propagated. While I don’t expect a solution per se, touching upon some of the privacy issues that relate to this would be a valuable addition to the manuscript (and they don’t have to be in this section necessarily).

Line 368: Is there a threshold beyond which the V2V propagation of the signal stops? At some point, would it stop being desirable to re-transmit the information about the D-VRU? Is it based on proximity to the location identified in the packet, or is there some other way to keep it from infinitely propagating, or is that not a problem (i.e., the network can handle extensive propagation of large numbers of messages)?

Line 385: There have been several mentions of “intention” as part of the protocol, but it doesn’t appear to be defined. How is “intention” being used here?

Line 412: Once the pedestrian has crossed, is there a propagating message that the pedestrian has crossed? As the pedestrian is still the same distance from the roadway (at least initially), it seems that the other vehicles will continue to treat it as a pedestrian who may be crossing the road. How is this handled (i.e., how is the possibility of a road-crossing by a D-VRU effectively “canceled” despite the D-VRU potentially remaining proximal to the roadway)?

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The mechanism proposed in this paper can detect people with special needs, identify the type of disability and alert other vehicles driving nearby, helping to reduce traffic risks.

1. In order to improve the standardization of the paper format and the simplicity of the legend, in Figure 1, "The figure is written according to the content in [9]. It is best to put this sentence in the text.

2. How were the model parameter values in Section 4.3 obtained, were they derived from real data or based on SUMO software simulations?

3. The reference value of the table on line 390 cannot be displayed. Please check whether there is a problem with the software during the process of outputting the PDF format.

4. SUMO (Urban Traffic Simulation) is a commonly used simulation software in the traffic field in recent years. According to the title of the thesis, it is known that the participants of this model are disabled and vulnerable road users and disabled and vulnerable road users. How does the author in the SUMO software behave? Characteristics of disabled vulnerable road users, such as walking speed.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

1. Emphasize the vulnerability of pedestrians in the road ecosystem and introduce how existing research has addressed this issue in order to deepen understanding of the topic.

2. Define the concept of self-propelled vehicles (ASC) more clearly in the introduction and explain the significance of their interaction with disabled pedestrians.

3. Explain in more detail how WPD's 802.11p communication capabilities work, including the frequency and range of transmissions.

4. Detail the role and function of the on-board Unit (OBU) in the vehicle, in particular with regard to receiving and transmitting information from persons with disabilities.

5. Expand the benefits and advantages of the proposed system for people with disabilities and autonomous vehicles.

6. Define the technical background of the wireless access system for the vehicle environment, including its aims and objectives.

7. Provide a more detailed description of the IEEE 1609 specifications and how they relate to the WAVE system.

8. Provide more detailed description of the simulation model. When describing the model, provide details on how to build the simulation environment.

9. Clearly explain the simulation results and provide more information about the simulation results.

10. Explain the rationale behind choosing a particular speed for the pedestrian and how it relates to the objective of the experiment.

11. Explore how to promote and advance the practical application of this research to promote the social and environmental integration of autonomous vehicle technology.

12. The conclusion should summarize the focus of the entire research and propose future research directions or improvement measures to demonstrate the practicability and potential of the research.

Good.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

I think this paper is fit for the publiation.

Good.