Mitigating motion sickness in automated vehicles with vibration cue system

Abstract

Motion sickness is very common in road transport. To guarantee ride comfort and user experience, there is an urgent need for effective solutions to motion sickness mitigation in semi- and fully-automated vehicles. Considering both effectiveness and user-friendliness, a vibration cue system is proposed to inform passengers of the upcoming vehicle movement through tactile stimulation. By integrating the motion planning results from automated driving algorithms, the vibration cueing timing and patterns are optimised with the theory of motion anticipation. Using a cushion-based prototype of a vibration cue system, 20 participants were invited to evaluate this solution in two conditions of driving simulator experiments. Results show that the proposed vibration cue system could also help participants to comprehend the cues and to generate motion anticipation. The participants’ motion sickness degrees were significantly lowered. This research may serve as one foundation for detailed system development in practical applications.

Practitioner Summary: In automated vehicles, passengers engaging in non-driving tasks are apt to severe motion sickness. A vibration cue system and cueing strategy are proposed and optimised to inform passengers of the upcoming vehicle movement. Simulator experiments of 20 participants proved its effectiveness in promoting motion anticipation and reducing motion sickness.

Graphical Abstract

HIGHLIGHTS

• Vibration cues to inform the passenger of upcoming movement.

• User-friendly and having no direct disturbance to non-driving tasks.

• Cueing strategy is based on the planned movement from an automated driving algorithm.

• Consider the temporal matching between motion anticipation and actual movement.

• Average success rate of generating motion anticipation reaches 89%.

Keywords:

• Automated vehicle
• motion sickness
• driving simulator
• vibration cue
• motion anticipation

Acknowledgements

The authors appreciated our group members Biao Xu and Hao Pan for their help in carrying out the experiments, and Jiankan Hu for his help in providing the theoretical and experimental instructions.

Disclosure statement

No potential competing interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of Science and Technology of Zhejiang (Nos. 2021C01SA601840 and 2018C01058), and Ningbo Science & Technology Bureau (Nos. 2018B10063 and 2018B10064).