General Motors has filed a patent application for motion sickness prevention technology for autonomous vehicles.
In a filing with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), GM noted that even as autonomous vehicles thrive, people may still be hesitant to ride in them. A self-driving car that causes motion sickness probably won’t make the best first impression.
GM notes that motion sickness is more likely to occur when passengers are focused on something else, such as reading a book or scrolling through their phone. Those are the things that many people are expected to do in transportation when they no longer have to drive themselves. Therefore, eliminating motion sickness is especially important for automatic transmission cars.
Cruise Origin driverless car
To that end, GM sketched out a system of lights and graphics that visually represent acceleration, braking, and cornering forces. That could be in the form of an image of the vehicle on the screen, or a change in color or light pattern. An audio or haptic feedback system could be used to create the same effect, GM says.
This not only helps to align a person’s sensory perception with the forces acting on their body — addressing the cause of motion sickness — but also builds trust by providing more information about what the vehicle is doing. doing, according to GM.
It is not yet clear whether the technology will make it to production, but GM is pushing the development of autonomous vehicles. GM-driven itineraries coming soon take a driverless taxi to the public in San Francisco. Cruise currently uses modified Chevrolet Bolt EV hatchbacks, but will eventually switch to a dedicated vehicle called Origin. First shown in 2020, it will be produced by GM at the automaker Factory Zero factory in Detroit.
