Towards the Management and Mitigation of Motion Sickness – An Update to the Field

Almost everyone can experience motion sickness and one third of the population are highly susceptible. With growing development and popularity of technologies such as self-driving cars, simulators and virtual reality (VR), motion sickness management will be more of a consideration in the future than ever before. People who are susceptible to motion sickness may not gain the full benefits of self-driving cars (e.g., increased productivity), have access to vocations involving significant simulator-based training (e.g., airplane pilots), or have access to the increased opportunities that VR headsets may bring (e.g., vocational training or job roles involving VR). Further, with demographic variance within susceptibility to motion sickness, it is known some demographic groups are far more susceptible to motion sickness than others (e.g., females vs. Males), which further identifies an inclusivity aspect to these technologies. This report evidences the strong motivation towards the mitigation of motion sickness and discusses the associated benefits. Working towards the objective of enhanced motion sickness management, this paper presents a new model to detail the onset of motion sickness syndrome and discusses the causal relationship between sensory conflict and the physiological and psychological effects of motion sickness. In doing so we identify within the existing literature many methods towards the management (both prevention and mitigation) of motion sickness and provide a direction for further study.