Assessment of data glasses for motorcycle riders in a simulated lane change test

Abstract

Relevant riding information such as speed or navigation instructions are typically displayed in head down dashboards on Powered Two-Wheelers. Data glasses provide information directly in the field of view and could, therefore, reduce glances away from the roadway ahead to focus on the dashboard. This study aimed to examine whether providing information in data glasses while riding as compared to classical head down displays makes a difference. Therefore, a total of N = 24 riders completed the ISO lane change test on a motorcycle riding simulator. Meanwhile, riders had to react to changing turn-by-turn indications which were either displayed in the dashboard, in the data glasses or redundantly in both display technologies. The performance in the lane change test and the reaction times achieved in the secondary task were examined along with riders’ workload by means of the Detection Response Task (DRT) and questionnaire data. Results revealed that riders’ lane change performances did not differ between the conditions ‘data glasses’ and ‘dashboard’. Information displayed in the data glasses was recognized faster and fewer turn-by-turn indications were missed. The performance in the DRT remained unchanged throughout the test conditions, while the subjective workload experience decreased with the use of data glasses. Overall, the results suggest that data glasses did not provoke an attentional capture effect and were, therefore, not inferior compared to dashboards regarding riding performance. However, data glasses did reduce the perceived workload and may in particular provide a safety benefit when time-critical information, such as warnings, need to be displayed.