Research Background
The National Institutes of Health estimates that “about 1 in 3 people are considered highly susceptible to motion sickness” [1]. Often when driving in a vehicle, passengers are far more likely to experience motion sickness than the driver. This is because passengers passively react to the car's acceleration, however, the driver can engage their abs, lean their body, and turn their head in preparation for the turn. 

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With the onset of autonomous vehicles, where everyone will be a passenger, there is a high concern for motion sickness. Many major car companies are urgently trying to tackle the problem of motion sickness. If the issue is not resolved, motion sickness may completely deter passengers from reaping the benefits of autonomous vehicles or it may completely discourage people from adopting autonomous vehicles.

Project
During both semesters of senior year, I worked as a member of the Precision Systems Design Lab; a Mechatronics lab. My team aimed to develop an active seat mechanism that tips and tilts a seat to mitigate motion sickness. The mechanism reads in driving data from an autonomous vehicle before the car accelerates then tilts a seat accordingly to mitigate motion sickness.

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I worked on all of the front-end development for this project and I was assigned the role of project lead in the second semester. I developed a Gantt chart, coordinated team meetings, reviewed patents, commercial products, research papers, developed a set of functional requirements, created a pugh chart, developed mathematical models and free-body diagrams, fabricated physical prototypes, designed CAD models, formulated FEA simulations, and developed manufacturing plans. I also had to learn and understand new sets of safety standards and apply them to the input of the project.

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The videos and figures show the output of our project.

 

[1] “Motion Sickness: MedlinePlus Genetics.” MedlinePlus, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 18 Aug.2020, medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/motion-sickness/.