Diagnostics of motion sickness (kinetosis) and training of resistance to it in VR simulators
Artem Bredikhin, Maxim Liulukin, Ekaterina Nikitina, Dmitry V. Nikushchenko, Anton Stiopin, Yulia Mikholazhina · Procedia Computer Science · 2022
Approximately 5-15% of adults suffer from motion sickness (ICD-10: T75.3, ICD-9: 994.6), also known as kinetosis, in one way or another. Being prone to it may negatively affect not only the daily activities of an average person, but also maritime specialists, whose professional activity is directly related to sailing in sea. The study of motion sickness, as well as the development of simulators that would allow training a resistance and adaptation to it and its symptomatology is an urgent task for the maritime industry. Various approaches for the physiological motion sickness resistance and adaptation training exist, among which the use of virtual reality (hereinafter referred to as VR) technologies is of high importance. Key advantage of using VR is the ability to simulate any visual environment, limited only by the task, hardware and software capabilities of the researcher. Currently, VR is already being used in the study of motion sickness [1] . We investigated not only the possibility of motion sickness, but also methods of reducing manifestations and symptoms by dynamically changing the viewing angles, as well as assessing the influence of peripheral and stereoscopic vision, including their various variations. The primary goal of the study is to investigate the direct effect of a visual channel on the symptoms of motion sickness, including changes of channel parameters (e.g., changes in viewing angles), and to assess the possibility of training a control group of users with vivid symptoms to reduce them. This paper considers 50 participants to be involved in an experiment, which is based on the developed research methodology for physiological motion sickness. Series of tests is carried out to identify symptoms and conduct a training, after which the research methodology has been evaluated.