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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2003

Utilization of the Space Vision System as an Augmented Reality System For Mission Operations

Augmented reality is a technique whereby computer generated images are superimposed on live images for visual enhancement. Augmented reality can also be characterized as dynamic overlays when computer generated images are registered with moving objects in a live image. This technique has been successfully implemented, with low to medium levels of registration precision, in an NRA funded project entitled, "Improving Human Task Performance with Luminance Images and Dynamic Overlays". Future research is already being planned to also utilize a laboratory-based system where more extensive subject testing can be performed. However successful this might be, the problem will still be whether such a technology can be used with flight hardware. To answer this question, the Canadian Space Vision System (SVS) will be tested as an augmented reality system capable of improving human performance where the operation requires indirect viewing. This system has already been certified for flight and is currently flown on each shuttle mission for station assembly. Successful development and utilization of this system in a ground-based experiment will expand its utilization for on-orbit mission operations. Current research and development regarding the use of augmented reality technology is being simulated using ground-based equipment. This is an appropriate approach for development of symbology (graphics and annotation) optimal for human performance and for development of optimal image registration techniques. It is anticipated that this technology will become more pervasive as it matures. Because we know what and where almost everything is on ISS, this reduces the registration problem and improves the computer model of that reality, making augmented reality an attractive tool, provided we know how to use it. This is the basis for current research in this area. However, there is a missing element to this process. It is the link from this research to the current ISS video system and to flight hardware capable of utilizing this technology. This is the basis for this proposed Space Human Factors Engineering project, the determination of the display symbology within the performance limits of the Space Vision System that will objectively improve human performance. This utilization of existing flight hardware will greatly reduce the costs of implementation for flight. Besides being used onboard shuttle and space station and as a ground-based system for mission operational support, it also has great potential for science and medical training and diagnostics, remote learning, team learning, video/media conferencing, and educational outreach.

Maida, James C.↗
NASA NTRS2001

NAPS as an Alertness Management Strategy

Today, 24-hour operations are necessary to meet the demands of our society and the requirements of our industrialized global economy. These around-the-clock demands pose unique physiological challenges for the humans who remain central to safe and productive operations. Optimal alertness and performance are critical factors that are increasingly challenged by unusual, extended, or changing work/rest schedules. Technological advancements and automated systems can exacerbate the challenges faced by the human factor in these environments. Shift work, transportation demands, and continuous operations engender sleep loss and circadian disruption. Both of these physiological factors can lead to increased sleepiness, decreased performance, and a reduced margin of safety. These factors can increase vulnerability to incidents and accidents in operational settings. The consequences can have both societal effects (e.g., major destructive accidents such as Three Mile Island, Exxon Valdez, Bhopal) and personal effects (e.g., an accident driving home after a night shift).

Rosekind, Mark R.↗
NASA NTRS2016

Risk of Performance Decrement and Crew Illness Due to an Inadequate Food System

NASA is preparing for long duration manned missions beyond low-Earth orbit that will be challenged in several ways, including long-term exposure to the space environment, impacts to crew physiological and psychological health, limited resources, and no resupply. The food system is one of the most significant daily factors that can be altered to improve human health, and performance during space exploration. Therefore, the paramount importance of determining the methods, technologies, and requirements to provide a safe, nutritious, and acceptable food system that promotes crew health and performance cannot be underestimated. The processed and prepackaged food system is the main source of nutrition to the crew, therefore significant losses in nutrition, either through degradation of nutrients during processing and storage or inadequate food intake due to low acceptability, variety, or usability, may significantly compromise the crew's health and performance. Shelf life studies indicate that key nutrients and quality factors in many space foods degrade to concerning levels within three years, suggesting that food system will not meet the nutrition and acceptability requirements of a long duration mission beyond low-Earth orbit. Likewise, mass and volume evaluations indicate that the current food system is a significant resource burden. Alternative provisioning strategies, such as inclusion of bioregenerative foods, are challenged with resource requirements, and food safety and scarcity concerns. Ensuring provisioning of an adequate food system relies not only upon determining technologies, and requirements for nutrition, quality, and safety, but upon establishing a food system that will support nutritional adequacy, even with individual crew preference and self-selection. In short, the space food system is challenged to maintain safety, nutrition, and acceptability for all phases of an exploration mission within resource constraints. This document presents the evidence for the Risk of Performance Decrement and Crew Illness Due to an Inadequate Food System and the gaps in relation to exploration, as identified by the NASA Human Research Program (HRP). The research reviewed here indicates strategies to establish methods, technologies, and requirements that increase food stability, support adequate nutrition, quality, and variety, enable supplementation with grow-pick-and-eat salad crops, ensure safety, and reduce resource use. Obtaining the evidence to establish an adequate food system is essential, as the resources allocated to the food system may be defined based on the data relating nutritional stability and food quality requirements to crew performance and health.

Douglas, Grace L.↗
NASA NTRS1985

The human role in space (THURIS)

An overview of the human role in space station activities is presented. Associated factors such as performance cost, and risk are discussed. Benefits gained from previous successful manned space missions are highlighted. Human qualifications and capabilities associated with man machine systems are explored. Candidate procedures to be carried out by extravehicular activity spacecrews are described.

Wolbers, H. L.↗
NASA NTRS2009

Spaceflight Human System Standards

NASA created a new approach for human system integration and human performance standards. NASA created two documents a standard and a reference handbook. The standard is titled NASA Space Flight Human-System Standard (SFHSS) and consists of two-volumes: Volume 1- Crew Health This volume covers standards needed to support astronaut health (medical care, nutrition, sleep, exercise, etc.) Volume 2 Human Factors, Habitability and Environmental Health This volume covers the standards for system design that will maintain astronaut performance (ie., environmental factors, design of facilities, layout of workstations, and lighting requirements). It includes classic human factors requirements. The new standards document is written in terms so that it is applicable to a broad range of present and future NASA systems. The document states that all new programs prepare system-specific requirements that will meet the general standards. For example, the new standard does not specify a design should accommodate specific percentiles of a defined population. Rather, NASA-STD-3001, Volume 2 states that all programs shall prepare program-specific requirements that define the user population and their size ranges. The design shall then accommodate the full size range of those users. The companion reference handbook, Human Integration Design Handbook (HIDH), was developed to capture the design consideration information from NASA-STD-3000, and adds spaceflight lessons learned, gaps in knowledge, example solutions, and suggests research to further mature specific disciplines. The HIDH serves two major purposes: HIDH is the reference document for writing human factors requirements for specific systems. HIDH contains design guidance information that helps insure that designers create systems which safely and effectively accommodate the capabilities and limitations of space flight crews.

Holubec, Keith↗
NASA NTRS2014

The Development of Human Factor Guidelines for Unmanned Aircraft System Control Stations

Despite being referred to as unmanned some of the major challenges confronting unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) relate to human factors. NASA is conducting research to address the human factors relevant to UAS access to non-segregated airspace. This work covers the issues of pilot performance, interaction with ATC, and control station design. A major outcome of this research will be recommendations for human factors design guidelines for UAS control stations to support routine beyond-line-of-sight operations in the US national airspace system (NAS). To be effective, guidelines must be relevant to a wide range of systems, must not be overly prescriptive, and must not impose premature standardization on evolving technologies. In developing guidelines, we recognize that existing regulatory and guidance material may already provide adequate coverage of certain issues. In other cases suitable guidelines may be found in existing military or industry human factors standards. In cases where appropriate existing standards cannot be identified, original guidelines will be proposed.

guidelines↗
NASA NTRS2011

Research and Technology Development to Advance Environmental Monitoring, Food Systems, and Habitat Design for Exploration Beyond Low Earth Orbit

Exploration missions will carry crews far beyond the relatively safe environs of cis-lunar space. Such trips will have little or no opportunity for resupply or rapid aborts and will be of a duration that far exceeds our experience to date. The challenges this imposes on the requirements of systems that monitor the life support and provide food and shelter for the crew are the focus of much research within the Human Research Program. Making all of these technologies robust and reliable enough for multi-year missions with little or no ability to run for home calls for a thorough understanding of the risks and impacts of failure. The way we currently monitor for microbial contamination of water, air, and surfaces, by sampling and growing cultures on nutrient media, must be reconsidered for exploration missions which have limited capacity for consumables. Likewise, the shelf life of food must be increased so that the nutrients required to keep the crewmembers healthy do not degrade over the life of the mission. Improved formulations, preservation, packaging, and storage technologies are all being investigated for ways slow this process or replace stowed food with key food items grown fresh in situ. Ensuring that the mass and volume of a spacecraft are used to maximum efficiency calls for infusing human factors into the design from its inception to increase efficiency, improve performance, and retain robustness toward operational realities. Integrating the human system with the spacecraft systems is the focus of many lines of investigation.

Sullivan, Thomas A.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Synthetic Vision Systems in GA Cockpit-Evaluation of Basic Maneuvers Performed by Low Time GA Pilots During Transition from VMC to IMC

An experimental investigation was conducted to study the effectiveness of modern flight displays in general aviation cockpits for mitigating Low Visibility Loss of Control and the Controlled Flight Into Terrain accidents. A total of 18 General Aviation (GA) pilots with private pilot, single engine land rating, with no additional instrument training beyond private pilot license requirements, were recruited to evaluate three different display concepts in a fixed-based flight simulator at the NASA Langley Research Center's General Aviation Work Station. Evaluation pilots were asked to continue flight from Visual Meteorological Conditions (VMC) into Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) while performing a series of 4 basic precision maneuvers. During the experiment, relevant pilot/vehicle performance variables, pilot control inputs and physiological data were recorded. Human factors questionnaires and interviews were administered after each scenario. Qualitative and quantitative data have been analyzed and the results are presented here. Pilot performance deviations from the established target values (errors) were computed and compared with the FAA Practical Test Standards. Results of the quantitative data indicate that evaluation pilots committed substantially fewer errors when using the Synthetic Vision Systems (SVS) displays than when they were using conventional instruments. Results of the qualitative data indicate that evaluation pilots perceived themselves to have a much higher level of situation awareness while using the SVS display concept.

Takallu, M. A.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Principal Investigator-in-a-Box

Human performance in orbit is currently limited by several factors beyond the intrinsic awkwardness of motor control in weightlessness. Cognitive functioning can be affected by such factors as cumulative sleep loss, stress and the psychological effects of long-duration small-group isolation. When an astronaut operates a scientific experiment, the performance decrement associated with such factors can lead to lost or poor quality data and even the total loss of a scientific objective, at great cost to the sponsors and to the dismay of the Principal Investigator. In long-duration flights, as anticipated on the International Space Station and on any planetary exploration, the experimental model is further complicated by long delays between training and experiment, and the large number of experiments each crew member must perform. Although no documented studies have been published on the subject, astronauts report that an unusually large number of simple errors are made in space. Whether a result of the effects of microgravity, accumulated fatigue, stress or other factors, this pattern of increased error supports the need for a computerized decision-making aid for astronauts performing experiments. Artificial intelligence and expert systems might serve as powerful tools for assisting experiments in space. Those conducting space experiments typically need assistance exactly when the planned checklist does not apply. Expert systems, which use bits of human knowledge and human methods to respond appropriately to unusual situations, have a flexibility that is highly desirable in circumstances where an invariably predictable course of action/response does not exist. Frequently the human expert on the ground is unavailable, lacking the latest information, or not consulted by the astronaut conducting the experiment. In response to these issues, we have developed "Principal Investigator-in-a-Box," or [PI], to capture the reasoning process of the real expert, the Principal Investigator, and combine that with real-time data available in space in order to advise the astronaut about how to proceed in real time. [PI] advises the astronaut during the progress of an experiment in much the same way a real Principal Investigator might do while looking over the astronaut's shoulder. In its original application, [PI] mimicked several of the tasks of the Principal Investigator, including data quality monitoring, troubleshooting, prescheduling, protocol management and "interesting data" detection. The proposed research focuses on the efficacy of this technique as applied to the data quality monitoring and troubleshooting aspects of [PI].

Young, Laurence R.↗
NASA NTRS1989

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 353)

This bibliography lists 238 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System in August 1991. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, biotechnology, human factors engineering, and flight crew behavior and performance.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1993

Performing speech recognition research with hypercard

The purpose of this paper is to describe a HyperCard-based system for performing speech recognition research and to instruct Human Factors professionals on how to use the system to obtain detailed data about the user interface of a prototype speech recognition application.

Shepherd, Chip↗
NASA NTRS1997

Design and Operational Evaluation of the Traffic Management Advisor at the Ft. Worth Air Route Traffic Control Center

NASA and the FAA have designed and developed and an automation tool known as the Traffic Management Advisor (TMA). The system was operationally evaluated at the Ft. Worth Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC). The TMA is a time-based strategic planning tool that provides Traffic Management Coordinators and En Route Air Traffic Controllers the ability to efficiently optimize the capacity of a demand impacted airport. The TMA consists of trajectory prediction, constraint-based runway scheduling, traffic flow visualization and controllers advisories. The TMA was used and operationally evaluated for forty-one rush traffic periods during a one month period in the Summer of 1996. The evaluations included all shifts of air traffic operations as well as periods of inclement weather. Performance data was collected for engineering and human factor analysis and compared with similar operations without the TMA. The engineering data indicates that the operations with the TMA show a one to two minute per aircraft delay reduction during rush periods. The human factor data indicate a perceived reduction in en route controller workload as well as an increase in job satisfaction. Upon completion of the evaluation, the TMA has become part of the normal operations at the Ft. Worth ARTCC.

Swenson, Harry N.↗
NASA NTRS2005

An Investigation of the Combined Effect of Stress, Fatigue and Workload on Human Performance: Position Paper

Stress, fatigue, and workload affect worker performance. NSF reported that 61% of respondents state losing concentration at work while 79% occasionally or frequently made errors as a result of being fatigued. Shift work, altered work schedules, long hours of continuous wakefulness, and sleep loss can create sleep and circadian disruptions that degrade waking fundions causing stress and fatigue. Review of the literature has proven void of information that links the combined effects of fatigue, stress, and workload to human performance. This paper will address which occupational factors within stress, fatigue, and workload were identified as occupational contributors to performance changes. The results of this research will be apglied to underlying models and algorithms that will help predict performance changes in control room operators.

Mock, Jessica↗
NASA NTRS2011

Design and Evaluation of the Terminal Area Precision Scheduling and Spacing System

This paper describes the design, development and results from a high fidelity human-in-the-loop simulation of an integrated set of trajectory-based automation tools providing precision scheduling, sequencing and controller merging and spacing functions. These integrated functions are combined into a system called the Terminal Area Precision Scheduling and Spacing (TAPSS) system. It is a strategic and tactical planning tool that provides Traffic Management Coordinators, En Route and Terminal Radar Approach Control air traffic controllers the ability to efficiently optimize the arrival capacity of a demand-impacted airport while simultaneously enabling fuel-efficient descent procedures. The TAPSS system consists of four-dimensional trajectory prediction, arrival runway balancing, aircraft separation constraint-based scheduling, traffic flow visualization and trajectory-based advisories to assist controllers in efficient metering, sequencing and spacing. The TAPSS system was evaluated and compared to today's ATC operation through extensive series of human-in-the-loop simulations for arrival flows into the Los Angeles International Airport. The test conditions included the variation of aircraft demand from a baseline of today's capacity constrained periods through 5%, 10% and 20% increases. Performance data were collected for engineering and human factor analysis and compared with similar operations both with and without the TAPSS system. The engineering data indicate operations with the TAPSS show up to a 10% increase in airport throughput during capacity constrained periods while maintaining fuel-efficient aircraft descent profiles from cruise to landing.

Swenson, Harry N.↗
NASA NTRS1984

Aircrew-aircraft integration: A summary of US Army research programs and plans

A review of selected programs which illustrate the research efforts of the U.S. Army Aeromechanics Laboratory in the area of aircrew-aircraft integration is presented. Plans for research programs to support the development of future military rotorcraft are also described. The crew of a combat helicopter must, in general, perform two major functions during the conduct of a particular mission: flightpath control and mission management. Accordingly, the research programs described are being conducted in the same two major categories: (1) flightpath control, which encompasses the areas of handling qualities, stability and control, and displays for the pilot's control of the rotorcraft's flightpath, and (2) mission management, which includes human factors and cockpit integration research topics related to performance of navigation, communication, and aircraft systems management tasks.

Key, D. L.↗
NASA NTRS1984

Aircrew-aircraft integration - A summary of U.S. Army research programs and plans

A review of selected programs which illustrate the research efforts of the U.S. Army Aeromechanics Laboratory in the area of aircrew-aircraft integration is presented. Plans for research programs to support the development of future military rotorcraft are also described. The crew of a combat helicopter must, in general, perform two major functions during the conduct of a particular mission: flightpath control and mission management. Accordingly, the research programs described are being conducted in the same two major categories: (1) flightpath control, which encompasses the areas of handling qualities, stability and control, and displays for the pilot's control of the rotorcraft's flightpath, and (2) mission management, which includes human factors and cockpit integration research topics related to performance of navigation, communication, and aircraft systems management tasks.

Key, D. L.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Performance enhancement in a semi-autonomous confined microsociety

Research in a continuously programmed human experimental laboratory has been directed toward identifying, defining, and expanding generalized knowledge concerning motivational factors within the structure of human behavioral repertoires that maintain and enhance performance. Participants (in groups of three) engaged in a series of repetitive work activities (e.g., word sorting and rug-hooking) for extended periods each day, while living continuously in a residential laboratory. Other parts of the day were spent either interacting socially with other participants or engaging in individual recreational activities. The percentage of time devoted to the various work tasks provided the basis for selecting one activity that occurred with high frequency and one with low frequency. Performance of the low-frequency activity was then required in order to gain access to the high-frequency activity. Under such contingencies, time devoted to the original low-frequency activity increased greatly, and the participants consistently did more than the required amount of the low-frequency work than was necessary to restore access to the restricted work activity. The theoretical significance of these findings resides in the clear demonstration that a time-based model of value applies as well to the enhancement of work-like performance as it does to voluntarily selected or preferred recreational activities.

NASA Discipline Space Human Factors↗