Marten Bloch

Currently I am working in the group under the supervision of Dr. de Winkel. The goal of my reserach here is exploring a possible way of alleviating motion sickness for passengers of autonomous vehicles.

Alleviating motion sickness in the context of automated vehicles through visualizations on interior panels

Motion sickness, in this particular case carsickness, has been acknowledged by researchers as a major burden to the mass implementation of autonomous vehicles (Diels & Bos, 2016). This is caused by the nature of this new form of traveling: the driver effectively becomes a passenger and can engage in side activities (reading, watching a movie etc.), the seating arrangement can be changed in such a way that some of the passengers face backwards, and there is no direct control about how the vehicle will drive anymore. 
All these enlarge the conflict that is believed to be the cause of motion sickness (Bles, Bos, & Kruit, 2000). Which can basically be described (although there is still ongoing discussion) as a mismatch between what is expected and what is felt. An example for this would be on the one hand the visual perception of being stationary, because one is watching a non-moving object (e.g. during reading), and on the other hand the perception of motion, because the vestibular system registers acceleration. 
In this project we provided participants with motion cueing stimuli in their peripheral vision to examine if these have the potential of alleviating motion sickness. These stimuli were presented on the interior elements of a car in virtual reality and physical motion was simulated with a hexapod motion platform.

References

Bles, W., Bos, J. E., & Kruit, H. (2000). Motion sickness. Current opinion in neurology, 13(1), 19-25.

Diels, C., & Bos, J. E. (2016). Self-driving carsickness. Applied ergonomics, 53, 374-382.