Comparison of Transfer Function Models to Represent the Correlation Between Vehicle Lateral Acceleration and Head Tilting Angle in Motion Sickness

Abstract

Motion Sickness (MS) is described as an unpleasant feeling caused by a forceful movement; hence vehicle movement impacts the severity of MS. While negotiating a curve, drivers and passenger tilt their heads differently, affecting their motion sickness incidence (MSI), which is the severity of MS. MS is a negative feeling, that affects occupant’s comfort, and to further understand the correlation between occupants' behavior and vehicle movement in MS and then represent it using mathematical models, it was proven that MSI could be predicted through mathematical models. However, there is an indefinite value between values between occupant’s behavior and vehicle movement. Based on that it is vital to express it the correlation mathematically. An experiment adopted from a prior study was utilized to get the data and develope the mathematical models with different proportions to represent the correlation between vehicle movement and occupant behavior in motion sickness in transfer function equations using system identification (SI), by utilising black-box feature to use the experimental data as input and output to allow SI to predict the transfer function models. The aim of this study is to investigate MS factors in relation to the vehicle movement and occupant’s behavior, to develop multiple transfer function models, to analyze and compare them. The results were obtained in the three different transfer function orders, second, third and fourth order functions for each proportion used for both the driver and passenger, the driver models’ results were in between 64.68%-67.87%, and the passenger results were in between 63.75%-67.93%, after the comparison the highest fits for each order were obtained. The highest fits amongst driver models were 67.87% (4th Order), 66.78% (3rd Order) and 65.17% (2nd Order) and 67.93% (4th Order), 66.3% (3rd Order) and 64.82% (2nd Order) amongst the passenger models. Those fits were then validated via Simulink with unseen data that was not used in identification process, and lastly the models Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) was obtained for all of them to determine their efficiency.