Dr. Vishal Chauhan is currently a Specially Appointed Assistant Professor at Tsukada Lab, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo. He received his Ph.D. in Creative Informatics from The University of Tokyo in 2026. He also worked as an autonomous driving engineer at TIER IV from 2024 to 2026, contributing to the open-source Autoware project, and was a visiting researcher at NTNU, Norway, in 2024. His research asks how autonomous vehicles, robots, and intelligent infrastructure should communicate with people in shared public spaces, and how smart-city infrastructure can carry that interaction rather than leaving it to individual machines. His doctoral work developed the Smart Pole Interaction Unit, an infrastructure-side eHMI that moves the burden of pedestrian-vehicle negotiation from the vehicle onto the street itself. The work was published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies and evaluated in VR, simulation, and real-world field studies where a working prototype was deployed alongside a real autonomous vehicle. He received Honourable Mention Awards (top 5%) at ACM CHI 2026 and was selected for JST ACT-X, a competitive national programme supporting young researchers.
Publications (15)
ThesisRoadside Pedestrian Interaction: Reducing Negotiation Burden in Shared Spaces with Autonomous Vehicles
Vishal Chauhan — Ph.D Thesis, The University of Tokyo, 2026
Int'l conferenceColored Shared Spaces (CSS): How Visual Design Transforms Pedestrian Experiences
Int'l conferencePeeking Ahead of the Field Study: Exploring VLM Personas as Support Tools for Embodied Studies in HCI
Int'l conferenceDon't Worry, Just Follow Me: Prototyping and In-the-Wild Evaluation of Smart Pole Interaction Unit with Mobility
Int'l conferenceA Silent Negotiator? Cross-cultural VR Evaluation of Smart Pole Interaction Units in Dynamic Shared Spaces
JournalTowards the Future of Pedestrian-AV Interaction: Human Perception vs. LLM Insights on Smart Pole Interaction Unit in Shared Spaces
PosterReimagining Smart Poles: A Sustainable Interface for Pedestrian-AV Ecosystems
Vishal Chauhan, Anubhav, Megha Sharma, Manabu Tsukada — OzCHI Student Design Challenge (Poster, Video), Brisbane, Australia, 2024
Int'l conferenceConnected Shared Spaces: Expert Insights into the Impact of eHMI and SPIU for Next-Generation Pedestrian-AV Communication
Poster"Text + Eye" on Autonomous Taxi to Provide Geospatial Instructions to Passenger
Workshop / WiPTransforming Pedestrian and Autonomous Vehicles Interactions in Shared Spaces: A Think-Tank Study on Exploring Human-Centric Designs
Vishal Chauhan, Anubhav Anubhav, Chia-Ming Chang, Jin Nakazato, Ehsan Javanmardi, Alex Orsholits, Takeo Igarashi, Kantaro Fujiwara, Manabu Tsukada — 16th International ACM Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications (AutoUI 2024), Work in Progress (WiP), California, USA, 2024
Int'l conferenceKeep Calm and Cross: Smart Pole Interaction Unit for Easing Pedestrian Cognitive Load
JournalFostering Fuzzy Logic in Enhancing Pedestrian Safety: Harnessing Smart Pole Interaction Unit for Autonomous Vehicle-to-Pedestrian Communication and Decision Optimization
ThesisOptimizing Pedestrian Decision-Making: Leveraging Smart Pole Interaction Unit for Autonomous Vehicle-to-Pedestrian Communication
Vishal Chauhan — Master Thesis, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 2023
Int'l conferenceTime-To-Collision-Aware Lane-Change Strategy Based on Potential Field and Cubic Polynomial for Autonomous Vehicles