Remotely Administered Psychoacoustic Test for sUAS Noise to Gauge Feasibility of Remote UAM Noise Study 2023-01-1106

NASA remotely administered a psychoacoustic test in fall of 2022 as the first of two phases of a cooperative Urban Air Mobility (UAM) vehicle noise human response study. The development of the remote test method to study human response to aviation noise was prompted by the novel coronavirus pandemic. The feasibility phase of the study described in this work remotely administered a previous in-person psychoacoustic test that found an annoyance response difference between small unmanned aerial system noise and ground vehicle noise. The implementation phase will use the remote test platform and leverage the cooperation of multiple government agencies, academia, and industry to assemble a wide range of UAM vehicle sounds. This database of sounds will be used to create a rich database of human response to UAM noise that would be challenging for a single organization to acquire. This paper details the results from remotely administering the Feasibility Test. It first details the test method and setup, which includes stimuli selection, test subject recruitment, online test layout, and the sound calibration method. Test performance will be measured through comparing annoyance response data with the previous in-person test results. The paper will investigate if providing a contextual cue to test subjects influenced the annoyance response. Administrative challenges that were encountered during the test will be discussed. Improvements to administering a remote test for the implementation phase of the UAM vehicle noise human response study will be recommended.