JLR software could enable nausea-free reading in driverless cars

Thought to affect more than 70 per cent of people, motion sickness is typically caused when the eyes observe information different from that sensed by the inner ear, skin or body – commonly when reading on long journeys in a vehicle.

Using the new system, acceleration, braking and lane positioning – all contributory factors to motion sickness – can be optimised to avoid inducing nausea in passengers.

During the first phase of the project, engineers created an algorithm that generated a personalised ‘wellness score’ for each passenger.

Based on 15,000 miles of motion sickness data, this calculated how susceptible individual drivers and passengers are to feeling car sick, using biometric sensors that record physiological signals. Armed with this data the vehicle will know when a passenger or driver is becoming motion sick before they do.

This can then be combined with motion and dynamics data and used to automatically personalise a vehicle’s driving behaviour and cabin settings. JLR claims that such an approach could be used to reduce the impact of motion sickness by up to 60%.