Influence of Inertial Stimulus on Visuo-Vestibular Cues Conflict for Lateral Dynamics at Driving Simulators

Abstract

This paper explains the effect of having an inertial stimulus (motion platform) for driving simulators on proximity to the reality for the sensed lateral dynamics with respect to the measurements and the perceptual fidelity using a questionnaire technique. To assess this objectively, the vestibular and vehicle level lateral accelerations (ay,sensed=ay_ vest, ayv =ay_veh ) were saved by using a motion tracking sensor and SCANeR studio software respectively. A confidence interval of 95% was chosen to test the correlations (Pearson’s correlation) and to fit models for the distributions of the visual-vestibular lateral accelerations with the multiple linear regression between the conditions of static (N=16) and dynamic (N=21) platform cases in terms of visuo-vestibular level lateral accelerations for the group of subjects (N=37). The results showed that the dynamic platform provides a higher lateral dynamics reality (positive correlation with an incidence of 90.48% for N=21) compared to the static configuration (negative correlation with an incidence of 50% for N=16) from Pearson’s correlation and a better fitted model and a lower visuo-vestibular cues’ conflict for the dynamic (R2 =0.429, the model is positive sloped, N=21) condition comparing to the static one (R2 =0.072, the model is negative sloped, N=16) from the multiple linear regression models. A two-tailed Mann Whitney U test yielded that the Ucomputed (2139)>Uexpected (1300.5) as p<0.0001, there was a significant difference between the sensed lateral acclerations for the static and dynamic platform cases. Disorientation related perception had positive correlations with the vestibular sensed lateral accelerations for the static condition whereas they were negatively correlated in the dynamic case. As conclusion, the dynamic platform presented a reduced level of motion sickness depending on the sensory conflict theory and the perception fidelity studies approved that dizziness was found to have a significant positive correlation with the vestibular level measured lateral acceleration in the static platform (r=0.293, p=0.037<0.05).