Prediction of Motion Sickness Onset for Vertical Lift Applications

Abstract

Kinetosis, also known as motion sickness, can be induced by various means. These can include railway travel, ship travel , car travel or air travel . Even motion simulators can provoke kinetosis. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, cold sweat, headache, sleepiness, yawning, loss of appetite and increased salivation, which also conveys the idea that kinetosis is generally not a desirable state. In the recent past, it has been identified that kinetosis is a noteworthy topic for some forms of transport, most prominently perhaps, the railway transport where the introduction of tilting trains promoted the study of this topic. Especially in countries where high-speed trains are introduced to curvy track, motion sickness becomes a problem among passengers as has been shown by Förstberg [1]. Furthermore, it can be easily seen, that a similar problem arises for modern transport solutions. One such problem could be the introduction of self-driving carsickness as examined by Diels et al. in [6]. If we extrapolate these arguments for the upcoming technology of urban air transport as proposed by numerous start-ups and companies, it is easily imaginable that motion sickness poses a serious problem for this kind of transport, especially if considering the proposed air-taxis, which will most likely travel at low altitude over dense urban airspace in conjuncture with many other air-taxis. Such operation conditions will not only generate fairly complex movement patterns, but are also prone to atmospheric disturbances like gusts. Given these circumstances, we predict that motion sickness will play a substantial role in the adoption of such urban air mobility concepts. People certainly will not be excited about a transport solution which is faster, but makes them sick every time it is used. Therefore, the following research question arises: How can kinetosis be accurately predicted given a flight path or an aircraft motion of a VTOL aircraft? This step is important in order to mitigate these risks in subsequent steps, for example, in the design of a flight controller.