Title: Motion sickness. Part II: experimental verification on the railways of a model for predicting motion sickness incidence

Authors: Claudio Braccesi; Filippo Cianetti; Alessandro Elia

Addresses: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale, Università degli Studi di Perugia, Via Duranti 1 – 06125 Perugia, Italy. ' Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale, Università degli Studi di Perugia, Via Duranti 1 – 06125 Perugia, Italy. ' Alstom Ferroviaria S.p.A., Via Moreno 23 – 12038 Savigliano (CN), Italy

Abstract: This is the second part of a two-part paper in which a new theoretical approach for predicting motion sickness is experimentally validated by field measurements. In this paper, an extended research activity aimed at the validation of a theoretical model (developed by the authors to evaluate the MSI index) is illustrated. The motion sickness incidence (MSI) index represents the percentage of people that vomit within a certain time interval and was defined to evaluate the passengers| response to low frequency motions. The activity was aimed to a rail scenario and it was conducted together with a well-known company in the railway industry. The rail tests were performed in Slovenia during 2005 (European research project |FACT: Fast and Comfortable Trains|). In the paper, a comparison is made between the results, expressed in terms of MSI values and time histories, obtained from experimental results (subjective measures acquired using questionnaires) and by the authors| theoretical model (starting from experimental objective measures acquired in the form of acceleration time histories).

Keywords: motion sickness incidence; MSI; subjective vertical conflict theory; railways; Slovenia; railway passengers; inter-modality motion perception; inter-sensory conflict; visual-vestibular interaction; sensory conflict; visual system; vision; vestibular stimuli; modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHFMS.2011.044494

International Journal of Human Factors Modelling and Simulation, 2011 Vol.2 No.3, pp.188 - 203

Received: 11 Sep 2010
Accepted: 08 Mar 2011
Published online: 22 Oct 2014 *

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