Jaguar Land Rover Has a Plan to Fight Motion Sickness in Driverless Cars

Someday, we might find ourselves in fully autonomous cars and our attention will turn from the road to our smartphones. So even though vehicle suspensions have improved over the years, we’ll likely still run the risk of motion sickness. To prepare for self-driving cars, Jaguar Land Rover has come up with a way to reduce the effects of motion sickness by up to 60 percent, it says.

Jaguar has collected 15,000 miles of data on motion sickness, measuring the effects of performing tasks in the car, such as checking emails. From this data, Jaguar says it has identified a baseline driving style that self-driving vehicles can adopt to curb motion sickness in its passengers. It will be able to minimize steering corrections so passengers are more comfortable.

More than that, Jaguar says cars should be able to tell when an individual passenger will fall ill. The automaker created an algorithm that generates a “wellness score” for each passenger. Biometric sensors record a passenger’s physiological status, and with this information, the vehicle can adjust its settings to reduce motion sickness. These include adjustments for temperature, seating position, the suspension, and even the height of the touchscreen.

Today’s adaptive suspensions improve ride quality and thereby reduce motion sickness. Earlier this year, we reported that ClearMotion is generating an advanced suspension that adjust every 5 milliseconds. Its future suspensions will essentially fingerprint a road surface, measuring all irregularities and pairing this info with GPS data. Then it can upload the info to the cloud and remember it for future applications.

When adult passengers stop looking out the windows, around 6 to 12 percent will likely succumb to moderate or severe motion sickness, according to a 2015 study from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. Among other things, the study recommended that autonomous carmakers encourage passengers to face forward by positioning the screens up front and by eliminating swivel seats.

Source: Jaguar Land Rover

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