Astronaut Training using Virtual Reality in a Neutrally Buoyant Environment

Abstract

<div><p>Astronauts undergo significant training in preparation for operating in space. In the past governments have been driving space exploration through ventures such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), however more recently new private companies have formed such as SpaceX who are designing commercially viable and reusable spacecraft. As such, the economics of space travel are more important than ever, and there is a logical need to research affordable and effective training procedures for astronauts.</p><p>Virtual Reality (VR) has been shown to be an effective technique for training people to perform high skilled physical tasks such as medical surgery. Research into VR as a platform for training astronauts has shown encouraging results with the implementation of hand tracking data gloves allowing the trainee to interact with the virtual environment. Further, there is evidence that VR can aid in the treatment of phobias with exposure therapy by better preparing the patient for real life exposure. Tactile feedback was found to enhance the treatment. Hence training with VR may help prepare an astronaut for the experience of operating in space through exposure to realistic simulations.</p><p>This paper proposes using existing underwater systems with VR to create a low cost extra vehicular activity (EVA) astronaut training simulation. Incorporation of tactile feedback and methods to track the body, hands and finger flexure, enabling user interaction with the virtual environment was explored. This allows for the creation of a varied neutrally buoyant training environment with a smaller physical space requirement compared to existing methods.</p></div>

Capital intelectual y responsabilidad social en entornos de programación de realidad virtual

“…Considerando que, la realidad virtual permite experimentar situaciones y ambientes que por su costo, accesibilidad o incluso riesgo serían impracticables en la vida real, la investigación contrasta aplicaciones como la simulación de ambientes mediante realidad virtual en el entrenamiento de futuras misiones espaciales de La NASA, (Everson, McDermott, Kain, Fernandez, & Horan, 2017), entornos virtuales para la prevención de riesgos en construcción (Rigol Carrasco, 2017), como también, una aplicación de la realidad virtual que ha demostrado ser lo suficientemente flexible para llegar a ser usada en la capacitación de tatuadores (Guerrero, Castillo, Cuevas, & Manrique, 2017).…”

Merging real and virtual worlds: An analysis of the state of the art and practical evaluation of Microsoft Hololens

“…Being able to simulate extreme conditions that would be costly or even risky for users is also a big advantage of virtual reality training, with examples dedicated to firefighters and fire victims [163] or even astronauts [42,6].…”

Features of adaptive training algorithms for improved complex skill acquisition

“…The use of VR as a medium for adaptive training is an area of increasing interest. Immersive training in VR is known to be effective at imparting complex, operationally relevant skills (Thurman and Mattoon, 1994;Ng et al, 2019) and has been used for decades by entities like NASA to train astronauts (Psotka, 1995;Homan and Gott, 1996), including to perform operational tasks in neutral buoyancy (Everson et al, 2017;Sinnott et al, 2019), conduct simulated extravehicular-activity (Garcia et al, 2020), and to perform on-orbit repairs of the Hubble Space Telescope (Loftin et al, 1997). Although the transfer and equivalence to real world tasks has been demonstrated extensively (Kenyon and Afenya, 1995;Rose et al, 2000;Hamblin, 2005;Park et al, 2007;Moskaliuk et al, 2013), VR training does not confer benefits universally.…”