MIT Libraries homeMIT Libraries logoDSpace@MIT

MIT
View Item 
  • DSpace@MIT Home
  • MIT Libraries
  • MIT Theses
  • Theses - Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics
  • Aeronautics and Astronautics - Master's degree
  • View Item
  • DSpace@MIT Home
  • MIT Libraries
  • MIT Theses
  • Theses - Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics
  • Aeronautics and Astronautics - Master's degree
  • View Item
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

The Design, development, and analysis of a wearable, multi-modal information presentation device to aid astronauts in obstacle avoidance during surface exploration

Author(s)
Gibson, Alison Eve
Thumbnail
DownloadFull printable version (22.39Mb)
Other Contributors
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Advisor
Leia Stirling.
Terms of use
MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582
Metadata
Show full item record
Abstract
The future of human space exploration will involve extra-vehicular activities (EVA) on foreign planetary surfaces (i.e. Mars), an activity that will have significantly different characteristics than exploration scenarios on Earth. These activities become challenging due to restricted vision and limitations placed on sensory feedback from altered gravity and the space suit. The use of a bulky, pressurized EVA suit perceptually disconnects human explorers from the hostile environment, increasing navigation workload and risk of collision associated with traversing through unfamiliar terrain. Due to the hazardous nature of this work, there is a critical need to design interfaces for optimizing task performance and minimizing risks; in particular, an information presentation device that can aid in obstacle avoidance during surface exploration and way-finding. Multi-modal displays are being considered as cues to multiple sensory modalities enhance cognitive processing through taking advantage of multiple sensory resources, and are believed to communicate risk more efficiently than unimodal cues. This thesis presents a wearable multi-modal interface system to examine human performance when visual, vibratory, and visual-vibratory cues are provided to aid in ground obstacle avoidance. The wearable system applies vibrotactile cues to the feet and visual cues through augmented reality glasses to convey obstacle location and proximity. An analysis of obstacle avoidance performance with the multi-modal device was performed with human subjects in a motion capture space. Metrics included completion time, subjective workload, head-down time, collisions, as well as gait parameters. The primary measures of performance were collision frequency and head-down time, as these both must be minimized in an operational environment. Results indicate that information displays enhance task performance, with the visual-only display promoting the least head-down time over tactile-only or visual-tactile displays. Head-down time was the highest for trials without a display. Results provide implications for presenting information during physically active tasks such as suited obstacle avoidance.
Description
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2017.
 
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
 
Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-158).
 
Date issued
2017
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113746
Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords
Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Collections
  • Aeronautics and Astronautics - Master's degree
  • Aeronautics and Astronautics - Master's degree

Browse

All of DSpaceCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

My Account

Login

Statistics

OA StatisticsStatistics by CountryStatistics by Department
MIT Libraries homeMIT Libraries logo

Find us on

Twitter Facebook Instagram YouTube RSS

MIT Libraries navigation

SearchHours & locationsBorrow & requestResearch supportAbout us
PrivacyPermissionsAccessibility
MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Content created by the MIT Libraries, CC BY-NC unless otherwise noted. Notify us about copyright concerns.