ACONIT - Global approach of the components of the comfort and their interaction for main line trains
Overview
Background & policy context:
SNCF has conducted an important research project on global comfort on board main lines trains, called ACONIT (Approche globale des composantes du CONfort et de leurs Interactions pour les Trains grandes lignes) whose objectives were to study passengers comfort representation and to propose improvements in comfort specifications. Before ACONIT, comfort was defined by SNCF experts. For instance, some experts carried out experiments with robots demonstrating the influence of sensorial aspects (resonance, vibration, vision, etc.) on the perception of comfort.
The overall idea of the ACONIT project consisted in considering the comfort as a judgment based on a set of complex elements by taking into account the travellers’ point of view.
Objectives:
This project aimed at developing and validating tools and methods for evaluating the passengers' comfort on main lines trains (long-distance) and to suggest improvements taking into account users’ expectations. The goal was to relate analytical research on some specific components of comfort with the overall impressions of the users in order to be able to specify the relevant improvements for comfort on trains.
Methodology:
The methodology is based on a multidisciplinary approach combining human disciplines with physical ones together with new methods of sensorial analysis generally adopted for new products design. It is based on a five step method:
- The definition of the framework (including the definition of a pre-established comfort model)
- Macro-investigation on the concept of comfort
- Investigation on comfort components and their interactions
- Defining conditions for performing a simulation of real conditions in order to identify possible improvements
- Defining a methodology for comfort evaluation based on results of the research.
During the first part of ACONIT, different surveys have been carried out with travellers by SNCF experts and a supporting team of psycholinguists in order to catch how travellers perceive and define comfort.
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