Research shows increase in AV motion sickness

Passengers are suffering from queasiness in highly autonomous vehicles (AVs), according to academic research.
November 11, 2019 Read time: 2 mins

The UK’s University of Coventry said its data showed an increase in motion sickness from passengers in such driverless vehicles.

Speaking during his presentation The effect of human factors on the development of connected and automated mobility at last week’s 8268 Highways UK, Andrew Parkes, research director, said: “We have research going forward in terms of motion characteristics, vibration characters and sound characteristics to bring this back down to acceptable levels.”

Additionally, he predicts there will be rapid advances in highly autonomous first- and last-mile pods, but insists that “proper research” needs to be carried out to produce vehicles where people feel safe in the vehicle - and also in understanding whether they are prepared to pay.

Parkes also recognises that interesting work is being carried out in platooning, in which AVs normally operate in a single file.

“We may want to develop adaptive structures so that different vehicles actually adopt a different shape of profile depending on where they are in the platoon,” he continues. “Theoretically we have adaptive structures where we can change the shape but doing that in an efficient and cost-effective way is what we are looking at going forward.”

However, Parkes warns that only paying attention to the “technology push” in areas such as sensors and artificial intelligence can slow down implementation.

“A lot of it is the user acceptance, human factors and business models which are the real keys to success,” he concluded.

Urban Traffic Control

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • CES 2021: Covid-19 accelerating positive change
    January 13, 2021
    Center for Automotive Research outlines knock-ons from road use re-allocation
    Read More
  • Slow moving US road user charging programme
    July 18, 2012
    Bern Grush recently attended the Mileage-Based User Fee Conference in Austin Texas where the fledgling American landscape for Road User Charging is beginning to take shape. When I was a kid I liked to poke sticks into the ants' nests in sidewalk cracks. Ants would scatter in every conceivable direction. They ran in circles, they ran over and through each other. They screamed without logic. I was fascinated.
    Read More
  • Developing ‘next generation’ traffic control centre technology
    July 4, 2012
    The Rijkswaterstaat and Highways Agency have joined forces to investigate what the market can do to realise an idealistic vision for traffic control centre technology. Jon Masters reports One particular seminar session of the Intertraffic show in Amsterdam in March was notably over subscribed. So heavy was the press to attend that your author, making his way over late from another appointment, could not get in and found himself craning over other heads locked outside to overhear what was being said. The
    Read More
  • EMV Transport Forum launched
    November 18, 2014
    The first of the EMV Transport Forum meetings will be held at Transport Ticketing & Passenger Information Global 2015, the world’s largest gathering of the public transport industry for smart fare collection and passenger services, on 29 January at the Lancaster in London. The EMV Transport Forum is the UK’s first industry collaboration focusing directly on aspects of implementation and market adoption of EMV transport ticketing. With the discussion shaped by pre-submitted concerns and questions, the
    Read More

Highlighted Content