Reducing Motion Sickness in Passengers of Autonomous Personal Mobility Vehicles by Presenting a Driving Path

2025-06-29

AI Summary

To mitigate motion sickness in passengers of Autonomous Personal Mobility Vehicles (APMVs), this study investigates real-time provision of trajectory information to enhance motion anticipation. We conducted a controlled experiment with three conditions: manual driving, autonomous driving without trajectory cues, and autonomous driving with trajectory cues. Using synchronized analysis of head pose dynamics and vehicle motion trajectories, we provide the first empirical evidence that trajectory cues significantly delay motion sickness onset and reduce Motion Sickness Susceptibility Questionnaire (MISC) scores (p < 0.01). Furthermore, such cues increase the proactivity and directional consistency of head movements and improve synchronization between head rotation and vehicle steering. These findings elucidate motion anticipation as a key neurocognitive mechanism underlying motion sickness mitigation in autonomous driving contexts. The work establishes a deployable human–vehicle interaction paradigm grounded in empirical validation, offering actionable design principles for next-generation APMV interfaces.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: Motion & Tracking
• Application Domains: Mobility, Driving & Flight
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Activity and Plan Recognition

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Agentic search

Abstract

Autonomous personal mobility vehicles (APMVs) are small mobility devices designed for individual automated transportation in shared spaces. In such environments, frequent pedestrian avoidance maneuvers may cause rapid steering adjustments and passive postural responses from passengers, thereby increasing the risk of motion sickness. This study investigated the effects of providing path information on 16 passengers' head movement behavior and motion sickness while riding an APMV. Through a controlled experiment comparing manual driving (MD), autonomous driving without path information (AD w/o path), and autonomous driving with path information (AD w/ path), we found that providing path cues significantly reduced MISC scores and delayed the onset of motion sickness symptoms. In addition, participants were more likely to proactively align their head movements with the direction of vehicle rotation in both MD and AD w/ path conditions. Although a small correlation was observed between the delay in yaw rotation of the passenger's head relative to the vehicle and the occurrence of motion sickness, the underlying physiological mechanism remains to be elucidated.

Problem

• Reducing motion sickness in autonomous personal mobility vehicles
• Investigating effects of path information on passenger comfort
• Comparing manual vs autonomous driving with path cues

Innovation

• Presenting driving path reduces motion sickness
• Autonomous driving with path cues delays symptoms
• Head movement alignment decreases sickness occurrence