Overview
The focus of this project was to improve passengers comfort and well-being, while fulfilling specific human needs during flight. To address the individual passenger and her/his needs, this was done in the frame of an individual and innovative seat environment. The ISPACE project provided concepts and step-change technologies in order to reach a revolution in personalised passenger climate control.
The primary objective of ISPACE was to provide a step-change in passenger comfort during flight by providing aircraft manufacturers and the supplier industry with the knowledge and innovations needed to address the individualisation of passenger cabin environment.
ISPACE set out to close existing technological gaps to achieve an enhanced cabin environment and passenger comfort with regard to: temperature, humidity, ventilation and well-being by controlling the individual's climate. Therefore, concepts and technologies were developed and their proof of principle shown through simulation as well as hardware models in a most realistic test environment (including low cabin pressure). The focus is on the personal environment of cabin occupants.
The project result provides aircraft manufacturers and suppliers with know-how and innovations to address the individualisation of the cabin environment. This will ultimately provide a step-change in passenger comfort during flight. Furthermore, validated tools for the simulation of individualised cabin environment will be developed.
ISPACE set out to:
- develop concepts for individualisation of passenger cabin environment and prove its general feasibility,
- develop and prove emerging step-change technologies for individualisation of passenger cabin environment,
- provide simulation tools for individualised cabin environment and
- give recommendations for existing and future commercial aircraft.
ISPACE is in line with previous projects, funded by the EC, which investigated the cabin environment with a philosophy on human centred design. Most of these projects investigated the current status and/or studied the impact of environmental parameters on the human perception of cabin comfort. Thus, only developments have been explored and problems have been identified. ISPACE on the other hand, addressed the individualisation of cabin environment and pushed the vision of individualisation of passenger cabin environment and comfort into reality.
To enable development of an individual climate system which allows each passenger to control the ambient climate conditions, the ISPACE consortium consists of ten European research institutions and companies.
Funding
Results
In January 2013, at the time of publication, no final results and/or deliverabels have been published or made public by the consortium. The results mentioned here, are expected or intermediate results as mentioned on the project website. The ISPACE project provides major innovations, like:
- gaining know-how about individualisation of passenger cabin environment and its impact on human perception;
- developing concepts for individualisation of passenger cabin climate and comfort;
- individualisation of passenger cabin climate in a realistic flight environment;
- developing validated simulation tools for the design of individualised cabin environment;
- developing and evaluating technologies for individualisation of passenger cabin climate.
Strategy targets
Innovating for the future (technology and behaviour): A European Transport Research and Innovation Policy