Passenger Experience of Simulated Urban Air Mobility Ride Quality: Responses to Large-Scale Motion

Abstract

Twenty-three participants took 10-min solo Urban Air Mobility quadrotor flights as passengers on two separate days in a six-dof large-motion simulator. One flight was in a rotor speed (i.e., RPM) controlled model; the other was under rotor blade pitch (i.e., collective) control. Both were flown in the same modeled turbulence. When ranked across test conditions, the severity of participants' self-reported simulator sickness symptoms paralleled acceleration-derived predictions of motion sickness likelihood in the following worst-to-best order: 1) RPM control; 2) collective control; and 3) preflight while still on the vertiport pad. Various objective measures revealed potential impacts of flight roughness on the learning of a visuo-manual reaction-time task and on heart and breathing rate indicators of preflight/inflight passenger stress.