Use Sound As A Medium! Volvo Develops Autonomous Driving Anti-Motion Sickness Solution

Recently, according to foreign media reports, Volvo announced that it is cooperating with video game company Pole Position Production to study solutions to prevent passenger motion sickness in autonomous vehicles in the future. The solutions of both parties will use sound as the medium.

People usually perceive body position and movement through eyes, body perception, and inner ears. Motion sickness occurs when what the eyes see does not match the inner ear feeling. If you look at the mobile phone in the photo of a moving vehicle, your eyes see a static screen, but the inner ear can feel the movement. This incoordination can cause nausea.

After the popularization of autonomous driving in the future, people will devote a lot of energy to in-vehicle entertainment information systems, so how to solve the possible motion sickness problem has become a problem for manufacturers.

It is reported that Volvo has two goals, one is to explore whether sound can help reduce motion sickness, and the other is to help people trust self-driving cars more. Volvo experimented with two different types of sounds. One was to remind passengers of what is going to happen, and the other was to remind passengers of objects (such as pedestrians) that the vehicle was aware of.

Fredrik Hagman, Volvo Car’s interactive sound designer, said, “With the development of autonomous vehicles, we will shift from a driver-centric sound interface to a passenger-centric sound interface. The previous sound design methods are not necessarily suitable for Self-driving cars."

Fredrik Hagman added, “Suppose we can play a sound to inform (the vehicle) of the upcoming operation so that passengers can be aware of the information. Therefore, if we want to accelerate, we will play a sound that mimics acceleration 1-2 seconds in advance.

It is reported that Volvo conducted related tests in August last year. Although the scale is small, Volvo said that the voice prompts alleviated the uncomfortable feeling.

At the same time, Volvo also announced an icon to display the test results and drew a "distress score" chart. Volvo reports that participants said these voices help prepare for what is about to happen, or "adjust their bodies."