# "What's Happening"- A Human-centered Multimodal Interpreter Explaining the Actions of Autonomous Vehicles

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.05322 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05322/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jan 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [A Comprehensive Survey on Multi-Agent Cooperative Decision-Making: Scenarios, Approaches, Challenges and Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13415/) (2025)
- [Modular Autonomy with Conversational Interaction: An LLM-driven Framework for Decision Making in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.05806/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Public distrust of self-driving cars is growing. Studies emphasize the need for interpreting the behavior of these vehicles to passengers to promote trust in autonomous systems. Interpreters can enhance trust by improving transparency and reducing perceived risk. However, current solutions often lack a human-centric approach to integrating multimodal interpretations. This paper introduces a novel Human-centered Multimodal Interpreter (HMI) system that leverages human preferences to provide visual, textual, and auditory feedback. The system combines a visual interface with Bird's Eye View (BEV), map, and text display, along with voice interaction using a fine-tuned large language model (LLM). Our user study, involving diverse participants, demonstrated that the HMI system significantly boosts passenger trust in AVs, increasing average trust levels by over 8%, with trust in ordinary environments rising by up to 30%. These results underscore the potential of the HMI system to improve the acceptance and reliability of autonomous vehicles by providing clear, real-time, and context-sensitive explanations of vehicle actions.