TU/e researchers reduce motion sickness in self-driving cars

On paper, self-driving cars are a blessing: you can read the newspaper in the morning while the vehicle steers to work completely independently. However, such a car also has a disadvantage: many passengers get carsick when he or she watches a movie or reads something. Two researchers from TU/e can reduce this problem by increasing the passenger's so-called environmental awareness.

An autonomous vehicle gives the passenger complete freedom, but this partly removes awareness of the environment and the intentions of the car, such as braking suddenly or accelerating hard. This can cause motion sickness, a problem that could complicate the further development of self-driving cars. And it can only be partly solved by driving more steadily. In the city, such a defensive driving style is not always an option.

Two TU/e researchers from Malaysia, Nidzamuddin Md. Yusof and Juffizal Karjanto, have come up with a solution. The Mobility Lab was used, a special car that simulates a self-driving car. Both researchers will defend their dissertations this week at the Technical University in Eindhoven.

The two researchers have developed four devices that subtly inform the passenger about his position without him having to look outside. Two devices provide this information with visual cues, the other two work with vibrations.

PVFS and VDAM

During tests with 20 passengers in the Mobility Lab, two devices were found to reduce motion sickness. This concerns the Peripheral Visual Feedforward System (PVFS) for participants who watched a film, and the Vibrotactile Display with Active Movement Mechanism (VDAM) for test participants who read a book on a tablet.

The VDAM system communicates with the passenger through vibrations in the forearm and two moving plates incorporated in the seat. PVFS uses 32 LED lights placed to the left and right of the movie screen. The LEDs indicate a change in the direction of travel.

With the systems, the researchers hope to have provided an impetus to improve interfaces in self-driving cars.

• Dissertation Nidzamuddin Md. Yusof: Comfort in autonomous car: mitigating motion sickness by enhancing situation awareness through haptic displays
• Juffizal Karjanto's dissertation: Designing visual peripheral information system for fully automated driving