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NASA “Explores Air Taxi Passenger Comfort Via Custom Virtual Reality Simulator”

NASA researchers have devel­oped a cus­tom vir­tu­al real­i­ty flight sim­u­la­tor to study pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ences in air taxis, reports an arti­cle post­ed on its web­site, writ­ten by the organisation’s pub­lic affairs spe­cial­ist, Tere­sa Whit­ing. The aim is to gath­er data for assist­ing the future design of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Air­craft where pas­sen­ger com­fort is the pri­or­i­ty.

Wayne Ringel­berg, a U.S test pilot at NASA’s Arm­strong Flight Research Cen­ter in Edwards, Cal­i­for­nia, recent­ly expe­ri­enced a series of tri­al rides in this new sim­u­la­tor. These ear­ly tests are cru­cial for improv­ing the sim­u­la­tor before it is used in a research study lat­er in the year.

Ringel­berg com­ment­ed, ”This project is lever­ag­ing our research and test pilot air­crew with ver­ti­cal lift expe­ri­ence to val­i­date the safe­ty and accu­ra­cy of the lab in prepa­ra­tion for test sub­ject eval­u­a­tions.”

He con­tin­ued, “The exper­i­ments in the ride qual­i­ty lab will inform the advanced air mobil­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty about the accept­abil­i­ty of the motions these air­craft could make, so the gen­er­al pub­lic is more like­ly to adopt the new tech­nol­o­gy.”

His eval­u­a­tion involved a sim­u­lat­ed air taxi ride begin­ning at a con­cep­tu­al ver­ti­port on a down­town San Fran­cis­co park­ing garage. The ride, designed by NASA engi­neers, took him through the city and land­ed on a sky­scraper ver­ti­port. Wear­ing a vir­tu­al real­i­ty head­set and head­phones, Ringel­berg assessed the sim­u­la­tion’s visu­al, motion and audio accu­ra­cy, pro­vid­ing feed­back for the research team.

NASA researchers Curt Han­son (back­ground) and Sar­a­vanaku­maar Ramia (fore­ground) con­trol the air taxi vir­tu­al real­i­ty flight sim­u­la­tor from com­put­ers dur­ing a test at NASA’s Arm­strong Flight Research Cen­ter in Edwards, Cal­i­for­nia, in March 2024 — Cred­it: NASA/Steve Free­man

Fol­low­ing these eval­u­a­tions, NASA researchers are to launch a series of human sub­ject stud­ies dur­ing the next four years. These stud­ies aim to under­stand what fac­tors con­tribute to a com­fort­able and enjoy­able air taxi expe­ri­ence for pas­sen­gers.

The sim­u­la­tor is a key fea­ture of NASA Arm­strong’s vir­tu­al real­i­ty pas­sen­ger ride qual­i­ty lab­o­ra­to­ry. It com­bines vir­tu­al real­i­ty visu­als, phys­i­cal motion cues and spa­tialised rotor sounds to cre­ate a real­is­tic air taxi pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence.

The project is man­aged by the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Ver­ti­cal Lift Tech­nol­o­gy project under NASA’s Advanced Air Vehi­cles Pro­gram. It sup­ports NASA’s Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mis­sion, which aims to pro­vide data to guide the devel­op­ment of elec­tric air taxis and drones.

For more infor­ma­tion

(Top image: NASA test pilot Wayne Ringel­berg sits in the air taxi vir­tu­al real­i­ty flight sim­u­la­tor dur­ing a test at NASA’s Arm­strong Flight Research Cen­ter in Edwards, Cal­i­for­nia, in March 2024 — Cred­it: NASA/Steve Free­man)

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