Designing Procedure Execution Tools with Emerging Technologies for Future Astronauts

Abstract

NASA’s human spaceflight efforts are moving towards long-duration exploration missions requiring asynchronous communication between onboard crew and an increasingly remote ground support. In current missions aboard the International Space Station, there is a near real-time communication loop between Mission Control Center and astronauts. This communication is essential today to support operations, maintenance, and science requirements onboard, without which many tasks would no longer be feasible. As NASA takes the next leap into a new era of human space exploration, new methods and tools compensating for the lack of continuous, real-time communication must be explored. The Human-Computer Interaction Group at NASA Ames Research Center has been investigating emerging technologies and their applicability to increase crew autonomy in missions beyond low Earth orbit. Interactions using augmented reality and the Internet of Things have been researched as possibilities to facilitate usability within procedure execution operations. This paper outlines four research efforts that included technology demonstrations and usability studies with prototype procedure tools implementing emerging technologies. The studies address habitat feedback integration, analogous procedure testing, task completion management, and crew training. Through these technology demonstrations and usability studies, we find that low- to medium-fidelity prototypes, evaluated early in the design process, are both effective for garnering stakeholder buy-in and developing requirements for future systems. In this paper, we present the findings of the usability studies for each project and discuss ways in which these emerging technologies can be integrated into future human spaceflight operations.

Virtual reality as an acute pain reliever during laceration repair in emergency departments: a randomized controlled trial

“…Keeping up with the high speed of these changes and adapting to them is more than essential for physicians in all elds and especially emergency medicine that could use any advancement in care of critical patients. Virtual reality (VR) has made its way from videogames to burn units in hospitals to space analogs for astronauts [14,15]. One of emerging utilities of the VR is its role as a method to alleviate pain and distress in a wide range of painful medical procedures such as wound care, chemotherapy, dental treatments and immunizations [16].…”

The Next Giant Leap for Space Human Factors: The Opportunities

“…In this area, there have been multiple research projects that are beginning to assess the impact of novel technologies on procedure execution. Augmented or mixed reality (XR) systems (Wang, 2022) as well as Internet of Things (IoT) (Karasinski et al, 2021) are being considered as potential procedural execution enhancements. On the horizon, researchers are considering how human activity recognition methods (Dang et al, 2020) may impact follow-along procedures.…”

Cybersecurity Leaders: Knowledge Driving Human Capital Development

“…See (Panetta, 2020). Of these technologies, this text points out AI and AR as significant technologies that are expected to lead in emerging developments (Anderson & Rainie, 2018;Karasinski et al, 2021). Also, reviewed is the need for both technologies as stand-a-lone, plus both as integrated technologies.…”