Reduction of Motion Side Effects and After Effects

"Motion sickness has long been a problem during the deployment of military forces. The increased speed and agility of today's transports makes this problem even more acute. For the special forces who undertake rapid insertions using a variety of vehiclesin all weather, the incidence of motion sickness can compromise the mission and endanger lives. Despite intensive research, there are still no adequate protection measures for motion sickness today. Those that provide some relief do so at the risk ofnegative side effects, or a delay in the speed of adaptation to the new motion environment. Adaptation is the best way to provide protection against motion sickness. However, it is usually reserved for aircrew and astronauts due to the expense and timerequired to provide sufficient repeated exposure to the motion environment. We propose a Protective Adaptation Training System (PATS) that will enable the easy and comfortable desensitization of personnel to specific motion environments before a mission.With this low-cost PC-based system it will be possible to provide protective adaptation to any number of personnel. In Phase I we will demonstrate the ability of the system to provide protection against motion sickness induced by an off-axis rotatingchair. An affordable, accessible system that can provide training for motion sickness will be immensely useful to both the military and civilian community. It will find applications from sp