Measurement of physiological and psychological responses during exposure to low-frequency whole-body oscillations

Abstract

Human responses to low-frequency whole-body oscillations were measured using a ship-motion simulator. An electroencephalogram (EEG), an electrocardiogram (ECG), perspiration, face-surface temperature, facial expressions, and the respiration of subjects were measured as physiological effects, and ride quality and motion sickness symptoms as the psychological effects. Before and after exposure to the oscillations, subjects were asked to reply to questionnaire surveys prepared to measure the psychological changes, to take blood samples, and to have blood pressure and sense of balance inspections. Measured results of physiological changes such as EEG, ECG, etc. have been analyzed by means of spectral analysis, wavelet analysis function analysis, and so on. The results of the questionnaire survey of the semantic differential method (SD method) were analyzed by introducing fuzzy integral and fuzzy measures as well as the traditional statistical method. Correlation analyses using all the measured results were carried out. From the results of analyses, it has been made clear that (1) subjects are classified into several types, and (2) psychological effects are important to evaluate the motion sickness incidence and ride quality, for example.