MEASURING THE PERCEPTION OF COMFORT IN ACCELERATION VARIATION USING ELECTROCARDIOGRAM AND SELF-RATING MEASUREMENT FOR THE PASSENGERS OF THE AUTOMATED VEHICLE

While the fully automated vehicle (AV) has been the future of the automotive industry, there is uncertainty regarding how the vehicle will be operating. This study aims to investigate the feeling of comfort in terms of experienced motion sickness for the AV passengers when exposed to two different automated test rides. Two sessions were performed on the real road using an instrumented vehicle. The first session was a defensive automated test ride (DATR) with relatively low acceleration forces. The second session was an assertive automated test ride (AATR) with stronger acceleration forces. Electrocardiogram (ECG) and self-rating questionnaires were used to investigate the relation between them when given forces variation. Statistically significant (p<0.05) increases were found when comparing the before and after self-rating motion sickness score for the AATR, whereas no statistically significant (p<0.05) increases were found for the DATR. For the discomfort rating, the level of perceived comfort remained almost constant throughout DATR. Whereas for the AATR, an approximately linear increase in the feeling of discomfort was found. The physiological variations (ECG) could not accurately predict the subjective comfort based on the statistical analysis results. The linear regressions suggest that forces resulted from driving should be kept as low as possible to improve the AV riding experience.