Using BCIS (brain computer interfaces) to evaluate emotional perception of passenger cabin design in virtual environments

Abstract

Cabin interiors design can be considered one of the key enablers to face the societal challenges of future air transport. The cabin is the interface between the aircraft and the passenger and it strongly impacts on the user's experience. The quality of the travelling depends on the quality of the cabin. It could be measured through several and different dimensions, such as passenger's efficiency during and after the flight and the level of comfort that he/she experiences. Therefore, reading or working while flying or feeling restored when leaving the cabin should be the key performance indicators of a comfortable cabin. In this paper we propose an innovative design tool, that is an objective method to measure the affective impact that interior design provokes to passengers, with particular regards to seat design. Such method is based on the use of large virtual environments, coupled with BCIs (Brain Computer Interfaces). We propose a novel and original framework to correlate the BCIs affective scales to a set of comfort indicators. Experimental results are presented and discussed.