You've Lost That Queasy Feeling…

Transcontinental research aims to understand the complexities of motion sickness to help improve the automated-vehicle experience.

As concerns mount regarding how occupants of automated vehicles (AVs) will react to being detached from the actual driving experience, researchers are trying to better understand how and why humans are affected by motion sickness. Aided by sophisticated tools and measuring apparatus, multinational research efforts are quantifying the causes of motion sickness - while grappling with the intensely individual nature of the problem.

Because motion sickness is different for everyone, Monica Jones, assistant research scientist in the biosciences group at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), envisioned one particular need for effective study: a consistent and repeatable testing protocol. This called for a motion-sickness testbed. Jones explains that remarkably, conducting the tests in real vehicles on real roads has, until recently, been rare.