Adaptive Neck Support for Wellbeing During Air Travel

Air travel is becoming increasingly more accessible to people both through the availability of low cost flights. Health problems may arise due to anxiety and unfamiliarity with airport departure procedures prior to flying, whilst during the air travel, problems may arise as a result of the food served on board, differences in the environmental conditions inside the cabin, the risk of cross-infection from fellow passengers, seat position, posture adopted and duration of the flight. These can be further compounded by changes in time zones and meal times, which may continue to affect an individual's health long after arrival at the final destination. The aircraft passenger comfort depends on different features and the environment during air travel. Seat comfort is a subjective issue because it is the customer who makes the final determination and customer evaluations are based on their opinions having experienced the seat. The aircraft passenger seat has an important role to play in fulfilling the passenger comfort expectations. The seat is one of the important features in the passenger aircraft and is the place where the passenger spends most of time during air travel. This chapter describes the development of adaptive neck support system to improve the wellbeing experience during air travel for economy class aircraft passenger. Design concept, prototyping, system implementation, experimental testing and design evaluation in an aircraft cabin simulator developed at Eindhoven University of Technology will be presented in the chapter.