A Human Centered Computing (HCC) design based Mixed Reality User Interface for Astronaut Lunar Activities
SPONSOR: NASA
PI: J. Cecil, senior personnel: Shelia Kennison, Rittika Shamsuddin, R. Krishnamurthy, B. Mayfield
This project involved OSU student teams participating in the 2021 NASA SUITS Design Challenge mission (in spring 2021), which was to design and develop an innovative user interface for the NASA’s Exploration Extravehicular Activity Mobility Unit (xEMU). The xEMU will be used by astronauts as part of the 2024 Moon Mision. The project activities focused on (a) HCI design of approaches and environments to enable cyber-physical training of astronauts on Earth prior to landing on the Moon and (b) design of HCI user interfaces on the Exploration Extravehicular Activity Mobility Unit (xEMU, worn by astronauts) through Mixed Reality (MR) interfaces to functionally support astronauts accomplish various tasks (such as lunar payload activities, navigating the lunar surface, rock/soil collection). The OSU team’s design was selected as one of 10 designs for the final round of testing at JSC NASA Houston. The Mixed Reality design was implemented on the HoloLens 2 platform.