RideVR: Reducing Sickness for In-Car Virtual Reality by Mixed-in Presentation of Motion Flow Information

Abstract

Humans spend a significant portion of their daily life in cars. In this study, we investigate a method to reduce motion sickness and allow people to use virtual reality (VR) while riding in cars. As the sickness arises primarily from the sensory conflict between visual and actual (or vestibular) motions, the proposed approach attempts to resolve the mismatch by mixing in and visualizing the estimated information of the actual motion, which is sensed by the on-board diagnostics and inertial measurement unit modules attached to the vehicle. We conduct a pilot experiment to validate our approach by comparing the sickness levels before and after implementing the approach in three in-car VR usage conditions:(1) Default -using the VR content without modification; (2) transparent wall -using the VR content with its background scene changing depending on the car motion; (3) particle flow -mixing in the VR content with the estimated motion flow of the car visualized as moving particles. Our experimental results show that motion sickness is reduced significantly (but not eliminated to a negligible level) using our approach.

PassengXR: A Low Cost Platform for Any-Car, Multi-User, Motion-Based Passenger XR Experiences

“…RoadVR [4] and RideVR [5] used a similar technical setup to CarVR [17] and McGill et al [34], but with an additional GPS sensor for more accurate positioning in RoadVR. They dynamically distorted the visual scene when the car turned corners to more accurately produce optical flow and thereby significantly reduced the experience of motion sickness.…”

“…Secondly, we display the movement of the real car through the city, by rendering a digital recreation of the streets via Mapbox 16 . This peripheral motion may help reduce motion sickness [4,5,34] and help the passenger's awareness of the journey progress. A digital car is rendered around the user and set as the reference frame (ReferenceFrame).…”

2nd Workshop on Multimodal Motion Sickness Detection and Mitigation Methods for Car Journeys - Finding Consensus in the Field

“…Studies are being performed on motion simulators in the lab with varying motion profiles, in AVs on test tracks, and even in cars in everyday traffic [2,9,10,19,21]. However, not only does the way motion sickness is induced vary strongly between studies, but also the way it is measured.…”

Workshop on Multimodal Motion Sickness Detection and Mitigation Methods for Car Journeys

“…Optimising the velocity or acceleration profile of the vehicle [16,22], suspension optimisation [17,30],optimising seat configurations [18,31] are vehicle-centric attempts to mitigate motion sickness. At the same time, passenger-centric methods involve presenting additional sensory input (e.g., visual input through a virtual reality (VR) headset or a displays placed in the car interior) [5,7,26], or administering neurostimulation to the passenger (e.g. TMS, tES or tDCs [24]).…”

“…The validation of both has been explored using different experimental setups. From motion platforms [21,24] and simulators [2,14,37] to on road studies using the Wizard of Oz method [1,5,26,36] or AVs [15].…”