Konzepte

Periscope increases the active safety during driving.

 

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concepts_slides
Wrong position

Modern dashboards mounted on Adventure motorcycles today are really fashinating. Unfortunately, 99.99% of them have a really poor design from the ergonomical point of view.
This happens for a simple reason: they are located too low with respect to the line of sight of the driver.

 

We're only humans

The human brain can 'read' symbols and letters just in the central area of the field of view of the eye. Such area is quite narrow in vertical size: around +/- 8° with respect of the line of sight. This area correspond to the small fovea and parafovea zones on the retina with an high density of optical receptors.
Out of such central zones there are the so called semi-peripheral and peripheral zones of vision. But the brain cannot use them to recognize letters and symbols.

 

The delay of the eye

To grab the information the driver's eye is forced to move the line-of-sight  down and "explore" the area to find where the information is located (i.e. a particular zone of the dashboard). Then the eye focus on it and 'read' the information itself.
The entire process "move+search+focus" (and returning back with the eyes focused on the road) can take even more than two seconds. Obviously, during that time you are not reacting promptly to what happens on the road. This can lead to accidents (even lethal) when driving in urban zones and/or on high traffic-density roads!

Periscope speeds up!

Due to his positioning in front of the driver, the Periscope

  • reduces the lag caused by the eye movement
    (eyes 'travel distance' is reduced)
  • eliminates the lag caused by the 'search' step
    (display positoned across the semi-peripheral / parafovea fields of view)
  • eliminates the deep-focusing step
    (the information is displayed with colors, not as symbols or letters).

To summarize, the use of the Periscope will help you to avoid dangerous situation and increment your safety.

 

The beloved speedometer

Examples of poor design

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The needle cover the tick labels in the speedo and tacho both.

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Unreadable speed converter. The gear counter is almost invisible.

(Photo courtesy of CleanMPG.com)

The indicator that everybody look the most is the speedometer, mainly because of speed limits.
What the designers of dashboards doesn't know is that the human brain need some fractions of a second to 'interpret' the image of numbers transmitted by the eyes. During that time the brain is almost fully absorbed in such task!
This is quite dangerous 'cause it greatly reduce your attention at the surrounding environment, with an high risk for your personal safety.

 

Can you feel the difference?

Nobody takes care of driving at 51 or 52 Km/h. What you want to know is just if you're above or below a certain speed limit.
We are humans, we cannot appreciate small differences and we evaluate the world around us by using roughly concepts that a computer will never understand.

 

A speedometer showing just what is important

The Periscope offers a speed indicator based on coloured bands. In this way the brain can 'read' colors immediately, leaving it free for other tasks and reducing enormously the "fixation time" of the eye.

To summarize, the use of the Periscope will help you to drive in a safer way.






 

Toyota Hilux Dakar - video by Toyota UK

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Toyota Hilux Dakar - cockpit view

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Toyota Hilux Dakar - cockpit view

Do I really need of all that stuff?

Modern motorcycle dashboards are extremely rich of information, nevertheless what you really need to know when driving a motorcycle is just the speed and the engaged gear number.
 

Speed information should be always with you

You need to know the speed in all situations where the human eye cannot evaluate how fast you're moving relatively to surrounding objects. This happens at nighttime, behind a big car/truck, in the fog or when you're surrounded by other vehicles during a traffic jam.

Due to its design, Periscope allows you to get easily such information in above situations. This allows you to regulate your speed better and avoid abrupt actions on the brakes.

 

Gear number is the most valuable information

Knowing what gear is currently engaged is very important when driving on a winding road.
You will be surprised by the fact that the bigger instrument on a car prepared for rally-competitions is the gear display. In most cases it has embarassing dimensions. Furthermore, all curves are marked in the road-book by a number: the gear to be used.

On a motorcycle you need to know the reaction of the engine before you start to lean down a curve.
If you're wrongly using a too-high gear then you can block your rear-wheel when you shift it down to correct your error.
On the other hand, too-low gears makes the engine reacting too shortly/brusquely, this with let you in troubles in a curve with low aderence (i.e. under the rain).

Periscope gives you an immediate feedback of the speed and the gear enaged, this will help you to drive better and more efficiently.