It is widely anticipated that autonomous vehicles will offer increased productivity and convenience by freeing occupants from the responsibility of driving. However, studies indicate that the occurrence of motion sickness in autonomous vehicles will be substantially higher than in conventionally driven vehicles. Occupants of autonomous vehicles are more likely to be involved in performing tasks and activities, such as reading, writing and using a computer or tablet, that typically increase the occurrence of motion sickness.
The authors present a novel high bandwidth active suspension system, GenShock®, and tailored control algorithms targeted toward mitigating motion sickness in autonomous vehicles. GenShock actuators can actively push and pull the wheels of a vehicle in order to keep the chassis level and reduce heave, pitch, and roll motion. The results presented in this paper demonstrate the effectiveness of a fast-response active suspension system in mitigating the occurrence of motion sickness in motor vehicles due to three-degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) motion (heave, pitch, and roll).
In this study, 14 test subjects were evaluated in a vehicle equipped with GenShock motion sickness mitigation algorithms. Each test subject was exposed to road-induced motions during two 30-minute long tests, on different days. Each test subject was exposed to one test where the algorithms were activated and one test where the algorithms were turned off.
On average, when the mitigation algorithms were activated, the severity of motion sickness symptoms due to 3-DOF motion in the laboratory was reduced by 68% compared to the unmitigated case. For the test subjects who reported at least some symptoms of motion sickness during the unmitigated tests, 78% reported little to no motion sickness symptoms during tests with the GenShock mitigation algorithms activated.