Predicting Motion to Combat Motion Sickness

I suffer from motion sickness. 

As a child, my mother would make sure to pack a full roll of paper towels, as well as a few garbage bags, to clean up my inevitable mess for any road trip. While I do better in cars these days, I can only keep the nausea fully at bay when I’m in the driver’s seat. 

It turns out I’m far from alone. According to Daniel Sousa Schulman, a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan’s Precision Systems Design Laboratory and the CEO of Motion Sync, 50 percent of children and one in three adults also deal with motion sickness. And while there is all manner of recommended remedies—ginger candy, antihistamine, and acupressure—there has never been an engineered approach. Until now. 

Schulman, in partnership with his advisor, Shorya Awtar, director of the Precision Systems Design Laboratory, has developed both a plug-and-play and vehicle integrated version of a new system known as PREACT. It works by bringing together real-time and historical data from vehicle sensors to help users anticipate impending motions. 

Motion sickness occurs because there is a sensory mismatch between what a person sees and what their body feels during a car, train, or boat ride. The result can be symptoms including but not limited to dizziness, nausea, and headache. To come up with a potential system or device to help alleviate those effects, Schulman and Awtar focused on why drivers are not affected. 

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“We looked at the driver and asked, ‘What is the driver doing differently?’” said Schulman. “One of the key observations we made was that the driver knows what’s coming up ahead. They can make predictions about what the car is about to do, and their body can respond.” 

For the past five years, Schulman and colleagues have developed a haptic version of PREACT that can be placed into any vehicle. The lightweight system relies on sensors to predict what’s coming next and then vibrates to help passengers know there’s a turn or a need to brake sharply up ahead. 


“As a driver, if you are about to make a left turn, you will incline your body to the left before making the turn so your body won’t get tossed to the other side. It’s a form of postural control,” Schulman said. “PREACT offers a way to provide that kind of postural control through a set of vibration motors that go into the car seat or a lumbar support pillow and will vibrate on the left, right, or both sides based on what is expected to happen. The passenger can continue to look at whatever they were inside the vehicle but now has a way to generate an expectation of what’s going to happen. And that can reduce their motion sickness.” 

The group has also developed an integrated PREACT seat that can be placed by original equipment manufacturers into the vehicles as they are being built. Schulman said the seats follow a similar principle as the haptic version of the system but instead of just cueing the passenger based on driving predictions, the seat will correct their posture for them. 

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“The seat is able to tip and tilt, coupled to the predictive vehicle motion,” Schulman said. “It can replicate what the driver does for the passenger without having the passenger even be aware of what is about to happen.” 

The research team tested the PREACT technology with more than 150 human participants using test vehicles that simulated both city and highway driving. PREACT significantly reduced feelings of motion sickness in the participants—and a whopping 80 percent said they would be interested in having that kind of technology in their next purchased vehicle. 

To commercialize and market PREACT, the team founded Motion Sync, a technology start-up, led by Schulman. The company is already working with a major auto manufacturer to look at its feasibility as a feature in new vehicle designs. 

When asked what he hopes that engineers take away from this work, Schulman encouraged engineers to work outside their domain or expertise to find new solutions to problems. 

“My lab is a mechatronics lab. We are focused on building robotic systems,” he said. “We knew nothing about motion sickness going into this project. But we observed a common problem that is faced by real people. And by bridging the gap between the problem and our domain of expertise—doing a lot of research, studying the topic, and going outside our comfort zone—we’ve come up with a solution that is tangible and can provide real value.” 

Kayt Sukel is a writer and author in Houston.