Visual ergonomic evaluations on four different designs of LED traffic signs

Yi-Chun Chen; Ting-Yuan Huang; Tsung-Xian Lee; Ching-Cherng Sun

doi:10.1117/12.2272932

23 August 2017 Visual ergonomic evaluations on four different designs of LED traffic signs

Yi-Chun Chen, Ting-Yuan Huang, Tsung-Xian Lee, Ching-Cherng Sun

Proceedings Volume 10375, Current Developments in Lens Design and Optical Engineering XVIII; 103750N (2017) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2272932
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2017, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

To investigate the legibility and visual comfort of LED traffic signs, an ergonomic experiment is performed on four custom-designed LED traffic signs, including three self-luminous ones as LED lightbox, LED backlight and regional LED backlight, and one non-self-luminous sign with external LED lighting. The four signs are hanged side-by-side and evaluated by observers through questionnaires. The signage dimension is one-sixth of the real freeway traffic signs, and the observation distance is 25 m. The luminance of three self-luminous signs is 216 cd/m². The illuminance of external LED lighting is 400 lux on the traffic sign. The ambient illuminance is 2.8 and 6.0 lux in two rounds. The results show that self-luminous traffic signs provide superior legibility, visual comfort and user preference than the non-self-luminous one. Among the three self-luminous signs, regional LED backlight is most susceptible to the ambient illumination. LED lightbox has significantly better preference score than LED backlight under darker ambient lighting. Only LED lightbox has significantly better visual comfort than external LED lighting in the brighter environment. Based on the four LED traffic signs evaluated in this study, we suggest LED lightbox as the prior choice. Further investigations on the effect of ambient illumination and other designs of self-luminous traffic signs are in progress.

Citation Download Citation

Yi-Chun Chen, Ting-Yuan Huang, Tsung-Xian Lee, and Ching-Cherng Sun "Visual ergonomic evaluations on four different designs of LED traffic signs", Proc. SPIE 10375, Current Developments in Lens Design and Optical Engineering XVIII, 103750N (23 August 2017); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2272932

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available