Kinetosis mitigation via light-based HMI motion cues in automated vehicles

Kurzfassung

With the development and deployment of automated vehicles in traffic, kinetosis or so called “motion sickness” will become an important psychological issue to be dealt with, as passengers are more likely to experience kinetosis in automated vehicles than in manually driven ones. As one promising solution anticipatory motion cues provided via light-based in-car Human-Machine Interfaces (HMI) have been shown to potentially alleviate kinetosis. However, questions of design and user experience of these HMI solutions are still open. In this experimental simulation study with repeated measurements we assessed the design and user experience of light-based HMI designs. Participants experienced a drive in an automated vehicle in an urban scenario, both with and without the HMI providing information about the vehicle’s directional changes. The two conditions were balanced and tested on separate days to avoid carryover effects. The degree of experienced kinetosis and user experience ratings were assessed. Contrary to our hypothesis, participants did not experience generally less kinetosis in the motion cue condition with HMI. However, there was a significantly pronounced habituation effect for participants who were exposed to the non-motion cue condition first and the motion cue condition second in comparison to participants who were exposed to these both conditions in the opposite order. Additionally, the system’s design received favourable user experience ratings from participants. Implications for subsequent studies involving physical vehicles and the design of light-based motion cues to prevent kinetosis will be discussed.