Effects of Tilting Mechanism of Narrow Vehicle on Psychophysiological States of Driver

Abstract

Narrow tilting vehicles have been proposed to address transportation issues such as traffic congestion, lack of parking space. The investigation of the effects of narrow tilting vehicles on user is insufficient though many methods for improving the stability of those were proposed. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effects of tilting mechanism of narrow vehicles on psychophysiological states of driver as a fundamental study. Focused on user satisfaction among the components of usability, the hypotheses that a tilting mechanism affects the user’s psychological state, and that the physiological indices such as a frontal alpha asymmetry, beta wave per alpha wave power based on brain activity are valid to evaluate the state were tested. The subjective evaluation of emotional states based on Russell’s circumplex model and the measurement of electroencephalography (EEG) were performed in the experiment using the proposed vehicle with the tilting mechanism. As a result, both the subject evaluation and the physiological indices based on EEG showed a significantly higher value of arousal and valence in the case of the tilting vehicle compared to the control vehicle. These results suggest that both arousal and valence levels of narrow vehicle users can be improved by a tilting mechanism.