Development of On-Road Automated Vehicle Simulator for Motion Sickness Studies

Abstract

This paper presents the development of the Mobility Lab, an instrumented car that was developed to support research on the comfort of automated driving. The Mobility Lab was established as a platform to investigate the implications of motion sickness on human users especially when exposed to low-frequency horizontal forces while engaging in non-driving activities. First, the Mobility Lab’s overview of interior setup and system architecture involving data acquisition system with its sensors is described. Then, a validation study is presented, comprising of simulations with forty-six participants by two designated drivers. The simulations were focusing on the manipulation of lateral acceleration based on defensive automated driving style settings. The consistency of the manipulations in terms of accelerations, velocities, frequencies and motion sickness dose values by both drivers was measured and compared. Subjective motion sickness assessments, as well as user rating towards the believability of the Mobility Lab platform, were also carried out. The results indicate good reliability in producing consistent simulations of automated driving experience within the desired settings. In addition, the versatility of Mobility Lab in term of flexibility on interior setup arrangement and also its measurement system makes various automated driving related experiments possible.