Trends in Motion Sickness Countermeasures for Autonomous Driving: review and future research

Automation raises fundamental questions, particularly regarding the driver-vehicle interaction. Increasingly diversified in-vehicle assistive systems will be at the disposal of the vehicle occupants; these will allow drivers to disengage from the driving task. Instead of keeping their eyes on the road, occupants will be free to engage in other tasks besides driving. However, this will most likely increase the levels of Motion Sickness (MS) experienced inside the car or, as it has been termed, autonomous carsickness or self-driving carsickness. The main objectives of this work were to: (1) present and review available countermeasures present in the literature intending to prevent or mitigate MS that, additionally, could be implemented inside a car; (2) identify current trends in countermeasures to MS and, (3) suggest future avenues of research for potential use-cases aiming to mitigate motion sickness in autonomous driving. Our research shows that multimodal approaches, exploring the application of different types of countermeasures simultaneously, are possible, and might be a solution for passengers travelling in future autonomous cars.