Does the testing environment matter? Carsickness across on-road, test-track, and driving simulator conditions

TL;DR

This study compares carsickness across on-road, test-track, and driving simulator environments, revealing that simulators tend to produce lower sickness scores due to limited motion reproduction capabilities.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of motion sickness across multiple environments, highlighting the limitations of simulators in replicating real-world motion sickness triggers.

Findings

Simulators show significantly lower carsickness scores than on-road and test-track environments.

Limited reproduction of low-frequency motions in simulators reduces carsickness occurrence.

Objective and subjective measurements highlight key differences in carsickness across environments.

Abstract

Carsickness has gained significant attention with the rise of automated vehicles, prompting extensive research across on-road, test-track, and driving simulator environments to understand its occurrence and develop mitigation strategies. However, the lack of carsickness standardization complicates comparisons across studies and environments. Previous works demonstrate measurement validity between two setups at most (e.g., on-road vs. driving simulator), leaving gaps in multi-environment comparisons. This study investigates the recreation of an on-road motion sickness exposure - previously replicated on a test track - using a motion-based driving simulator. Twenty-eight participants performed an eyes-off-road non-driving task while reporting motion sickness using the Misery Scale during the experiment and the Motion Sickness Assessment Questionnaire afterward. Psychological factors known to influence motion sickness were also assessed. The results present subjective and objective measurements for motion sickness across the considered environments. In this paper, acceleration measurements, objective metrics and subjective motion sickness ratings across environments are compared, highlighting key differences in sickness occurrence for simulator-based research validity. Significantly lower motion sickness scores are reported in the simulator compared to on-road and test-track conditions, due to its limited working envelope to reproduce low-frequency (<0.5 Hz) motions, which are the most provocative for motion sickness.