MOTORING
Initially at least, driverless cars will look much like any others. They will still have a steering wheel and forward- facing passengers. Eventually, though, autonomy will bring changes to a car’s interior. The steering wheel will disappear and passenger orientation is likely to become more inwardly focused. With no particular need to look at the road ahead, the cabin can be repackaged with some seats rearward facing. All of which my result in a new problem: kinetosis. Car sickness, in other words. It may well be a problem that travelling in a car driven autonomously will increase the risk of making passengers nauseous. It’s a problem that motor manufacturers are taking seriously in preparation for autonomous cars actually arriving in our lives. Passenger nausea is nothing new. It typically affects young children travelling in the rear seats with a restricted view of the road ahead, and it also afflicts some nervous adults who would feel better behind the wheel than seated alongside an enthusiastic driver. Some 5 to 10% of the population are susceptible to car motion sickness, with 30 million people across Europe afflicted – so it’s an issue that is focusing industry minds on what to do about it. That includes the UK Autodrive project,
the government-backed consortia of automotive businesses, local authorities and academic institutions dedicated to supporting the introduction of self- driving vehicles into the UK. Jaguar Land Rover is one of the companies involved, with a team of engineers and cognitive psychologists working in a Future Mobility division. Claiming industry- leading motion sickness research, JLR has amassed 15,000 miles of motion sickness data and used it to create an algorithm that generates a ‘wellness score’ for each passenger. It is now working on a system that can automatically personalise an autonomous car’s driving and cabin settings to reduce nausea risk, it claims, by up to 60%. The research includes developing satellite navigation that considers the car’s speed, distance travelled and energy forces to determine an optimum wellness route. JLR’s Future Mobility team includes a wellness technology researcher, Spencer Salter, who explains: “As we move towards an autonomous future where occupants have more time to either work, read or relax on longer journeys, it’s important we develop vehicles that can adapt to reduce the effects of motion sickness in a way that’s tailored to each passenger.”
Citroën has taken a different route to tackle the same problem, developing cannily-named and patented Seetroën spectacles, comprising a bizarre quartet of white roundels edged in bright blue, with moving liquid inside the rings around the eyes. They look like a gimmick, but when I asked a car sickness sufferer to try them on a journey, we were both amazed that they worked. While the brave new world of autonomous cars brings issues as well as advantages, smart engineers are already coming up with solutions. You’ll be ‘driving’ one sooner than you think!
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ISSUE 01
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