Development and Validation of a Spacesuit Simulator for Collecting Experimental Physiological and Behavioral Data
Conference Proceeding
Overview
abstract
Spaceflight research has seen an increased focus on; developing models of astronaut health, operational; readiness, and cognitive states from physiological data; during astronaut operations. In particular, astronaut; monitoring during extravehicular activities (EVAs) will; become increasingly important for future deep space; exploration missions to the Moon and Mars with reduced; reliance on Earth-based support. A primary challenge in; developing models is the ability to collect sufficient,; representative sample data in realistic operational; settings, and models developed to date have been; constrained to using human data collected in laboratory; settings. Spacesuit simulators offer a means to collect; data in experimental settings on simulated EVA, but a suite; of physiological and behavioral sensors and data; acquisition has yet to be incorporated into simulated; spacesuits. As a result, existing models remain unvalidated; in representative environments. Without providing human; participants with similar ecological constraints and; validity, models trained on lab-based data may not; generalize to field EVA operations. To address these gaps,; this work presents the development and validation of a; spacesuit simulator capable of collecting behavioral,; physiological (including neural) data during naturalistic; simulated EVAs. Specifically, the spacesuit simulator; enables the collection of speech and navigation data as; well as functional near-infrared spectroscopy and; eye-tracking, recorded from in-suit sensors by embedding; data acquisition hardware within the portable life support; system. To simulate teaming constraints, the helmet; ventilation system forces communication to be mediated by; technological devices. Finally, these suits accommodate; diverse anthropometries (5th percentile female to 95th; percentile male) to enable the collection of generalizable; sample datasets. Following fabrication, the collection of; these physiological data for future model development was; validated in dyads during simulated EVA surface operations.
