Effectiveness of Haptic Modality in an Intelligent Bicycle Safety Driving Device Supporting Bicycle Delivery Service.

Deliverymen have widely adopted smart phone apps for better delivery performance. With the development of the delivery industry and the increase of its employees, the personal safety of deliverymen in completing orders has attracted the same attention as task performance. In addition to the smartphone apps, we designed an intelligent delivery assistant (IDA) system with "multi-modal navigation" to improve the safety and efficiency of bicycle deliveries. The IDA system was equipped with a pair of driving controllers that allowed deliverymen to interact with the IDA system and get navigation information during riding. This 60-human-participant study was conducted to investigate the performance of the IDA system, including usability and safety. The participants were divided into two groups for a comparative experiment, one with the IDA system and the other with only a smartphone. Navigation was conducted in a real-world environment, in which eye movements and device interaction were recorded using an eye tracker. Results indicate that the IDA system better supports delivery usability and safety. Higher perceived usability and better situational awareness with a more significant number of hazards acknowledged were detected with the IDA system. The NASA-TLX and UEQ results demonstrated the participants reported having a better user experience with the IDA system. We further discussed the benefits and drawbacks of each condition of the IDA system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]