Can seat suspensions mitigate motion sickness and enhance vibration comfort while being driven? A subjective assessment of the K-Seat

Prolonged exposure to whole-body vibration (WBV) is a key contributor to motion discomfort in vehicles, including motion sickness and ride comfort. This issue becomes more compelling in automated vehicles, where occupants are expected to frequently engage in non-driving-related activities and will expect high comfort levels. Hence, enhancing seat design to mitigate WBV is essential for improving ride comfort across vehicle types. Therefore, this study, which primarily addresses vertical accelerations, optimized an existing seat suspension (K-Seat) and subjectively assessed discomfort using 24 participants (13 males and 11 females) exposed to a 29-minute driving session. The experiment was conducted with a conventional Toyota Yaris seat in a driving simulator, where a K-Seat model was used to emulate the effect of the seat suspension. Thus we evaluated the K-Seat, which has shown great promise for attenuating low-frequency vibrations; however, it had never been tested on human participants. The results show an overall reduction of 50% in reported motion sickness using the motion illness symptoms classification scale (MISC). Subjective discomfort was also alleviated for head and upper back. In addition, perceived discomfort was analyzed based on gender, illustrating a greater effectiveness of the K-Seat in enhancing lower neck comfort for females than for males.