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

  • After two decades of research, ITS is getting into its stride
    June 4, 2015
    Colin Sowman gets the global view on how ITS has shaped the way we travel today and what will shape the way we travel tomorrow. Over the past two decades the scope and spread of intelligent transport systems has grown and diversified to encompass all modes of travel while at the same time integrating and consolidating. Two decades ago the idea of detecting cyclists or pedestrians may have been considered impossible and why would you want to do that anyway? Today cyclists can account for a significant propor
    Read More
  • We need to talk about AVs
    October 15, 2021
    Will driverless vehicles lead to more deaths and destroy more lives than their manual counterparts? Transport writer Colin Sowman argues that they will
    Read More
  • Confusing funding and financing can be costly
    September 23, 2014
    Tolling may be the way forward for paying for the roads of the future - but where will concessionaires find the money and do they need funding or financing? Increasingly, governments around the world are concluding that they can no longer pay for new roads and are turning to the private sector for help.
    Read More
  • Assessing the potential of in-vehicle enforcement systems
    December 4, 2012
    Jason Barnes considers the social and ethical ramifications of using in-vehicle safety technologies to fulfil enforcement functions. Although policy documents often imply close correlation between enforcement, compliance and safety – in part, as a counter to accusations that enforcement is rather more concerned with revenue generation – there is a noticeable reluctance among policy makers and auto manufacturers to exploit in-vehicle safety systems for enforcement applications. From a technical perspective t
    Read More

Highlighted Content