Experimental Investigation of the Relationship Between Human Discomfort and Involuntary Movements in Vehicle Seat

Abstract

To evaluate human discomfort in a vehicle seat, we have focused on the involuntary movements of participants. In our previous studies, we carried out the driving simulator experiment to investigate a change in human discomfort during 60 min of traveling. In the experiment, we video-recorded the participant’s movements and checked all video off-line to obtain the frequencies of participants’ movement. Consequently, we could discuss the relationship between the subjective ratings of participants and the frequencies of the involuntary movements. However, we recognized that the visual judgment was too heavy for us to carry out. Thus, we have developed other methods to detect involuntary movements. In this paper, we proposed the unrestrained method with flex sensors, and we reported the comparison result between the subjective discomfort and the frequency of the involuntary index as an objective index.