Floor-vibration VR: Mitigating Cybersickness Using Whole-body Tactile Stimuli in Highly Realistic Vehicle Driving Experiences

This work addresses cybersickness, a major barrier to successful long-exposure immersive virtual reality (VR) experiences since user discomfort frequently leads to prematurely ending such experiences. Starting from sensory conflict theory, we posit that if a vibrating floor delivers vestibular stimuli that minimally match the vibration characteristics of a scenario, the size of the conflict between the visual and vestibular senses will be reduced and, thus, the incidence and/or severity of cybersickness will also be reduced. We integrated a custom-built, computer-controlled vibrating floor in our VR system. To evaluate the system, we implemented a realistic off-road vehicle driving simulator in which participants rode multiple laps as passengers on an off-road course. We programmed the floor to generate vertical vibrations similar to those experienced in real off-road vehicle travel. The scenario and driving conditions were designed to be cybersickness-inducing for users in both the Vibration and No-vibration conditions. We collected subjective and objective data for variables previously shown to be related to levels of cybersickness or presence. These included presence and simulator sickness questionnaires (SSQ), self-rated discomfort levels, and the physiological signals of heart rate, galvanic skin response (GSR), and pupil size. Comparing data between participants in the Vibration group (N=11) to the No-Vibration group (N=11), we found that Delta-SSQ Oculomotor response and the GSR physiological signal, both known to be positively correlated with cybersickness, were significantly lower (with large effect sizes) for the Vibration group. Other variables differed between groups in the same direction, but with trivial or small effect sizes. The results indicate that the floor vibration significantly reduced some measures of cybersickness.