Virtual reality helps against travel sickness in self -driving cars!

Virtual reality helps against travel sickness in self -driving cars!

The long -established vehicles are on the streets, and with the increasing number of autonomous vehicles, the problem of travel sickness is also up to date. In cooperation with Volkswagen and Laura Marchal Crespo, the team around Georgios Papaioannou at TU Delft has developed an innovative solution: the motion anticipation training for automated vehicles (Mate-AV), a virtual reality app that is intended to help passengers adapt their posture to the movements of the vehicle. Passengers who want to work or read in the car are often affected by nausea, while drivers themselves cannot experience symptoms [tudelft.nl] reports of the urgency to address these symptoms.

With the increase in autonomous vehicles, travel sickness becomes increasingly a stumbling block. Studies show that up to a third of people is very susceptible to travel sickness, which occurs not only in the car, but also when driving at sea or using virtual reality headsets. Passengers often experience opposing movements, which can cause nausea. The study, which Mate-AV accompanied, was carried out on 21 participants, with half of the half of the app to synchronize its movements, while the other half acted as a control group. The students experienced the reactions of the participants as unpredictable, which illustrated the challenges that can occur in such experiments.

results of the experiment

The results speak for themselves. Participants who used the Mate AV app adapted their posture to the vehicle movements significantly better. Nevertheless, the follow -up examinations showed that the majority of the participants returned to their original behavior without visual information. This represents an important learning field that the researchers are now further investigating to ensure the long -term effect of the training. Future studies could certainly include several training sessions via longer periods of time to exploit the full potential of Mate-AV [tudelft.nl]

But the TU Delft is not only in its research. The WMG of the University of Warwick has also presented valuable results. A combination of visuospatial training has shown that within just two weeks the travel sickness can be reduced by 51% in the driving simulator and impressive 58% in real tests. The study participants completed 15 minutes of visual training tasks every day, and the increase in productivity that promises to reduce travel sickness could be up to $ 508 billion a year [Neurosciencenews.com].

The future of research

The success of these research projects are promising and throw a light on the need for further investigations in this area. The knowledge gained could not only be important when traveling in autonomous vehicles, but also for other areas, such as seasickness from naval staff or at cruise passengers. An approach to using brain training for travel sickness could promise remarkable progress [aponet.de].

In a time when autonomy progresses in traffic, it remains to be recognized that the challenges that are associated with this technology cause solutions such as Mate-AV. Research is progressing to ensure that our trips are not only safe, but also pleasant. It remains exciting to see how these technologies develop and what other solutions the science has in stock.