Kinetosis

Autonomous driving is often made appealing to us by the fact that we can use the time in the vehicle for relaxation and regeneration. Monitors, reclining seats, ambient lighting - all of this has found its way into new vehicle concepts of leading automobile manufacturers. Highly automated systems are currently pushing the global car market.

But would we really use the whole time in the car for relaxation, or would this time really be given to us by our employers? Realistically, we should rather assume that these systems only give us more time to work, so we will experience simultaneous driving and work activities. This creates completely new requirements for the interior design of the vehicles. We have to consider the necessary changes in position and relative movement of our head relative to the vehicle when arranging the monitors and controls, if the "sensitive" people among us do not want to feel travel sick in the shortest possible time (which is scientifically called kinetosis).

In research we found out that cognitive performance also decreases with the “strong” people who do not mind the relative movement superficially, so this is reduced with kinetogenic stimulation regardless of the occurrence of symptoms.

From military use we already know intensive and demanding work on digital controls, because it is part of our soldiers' everyday life. The environmental conditions already show significant differences compared to the civilian sector: the view outside is heavily restricted with armored land vehicles. In addition, the mechanical vibration loads as well as the climatic and acoustic conditions in the German army operations can be far above the conditions in the civilian world.

An interdisciplinary team of the fields of medicine, psychology and engineering has set itself the task of quantifying the effects of kinetogenic stimulating factors such as vibrations, sound, ergonomics and temperature. In this way, we want to derive technical requirements for vehicles that ensure that the performance of the passengers is maintained.