Materials, Methods, and Accomplishments: The HCAAM Enhanced Procedures research team has spent Year 1&2 preparing for Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) Campaign 6, now scheduled to launch in September 2021. Accomplishments include:
• We are utilizing a COTS (commercial off the shelf) electrical generator as a spacecraft subsystem analog which subjects are asked to partially disassemble and then reassemble using both traditional and experimentally-enhanced procedures. During Year 1&2, we finalized our experiment system architecture for serving, displaying, and interacting with the enhanced procedure viewer. Raspberry Pi and sensors are now built into the customized Honda generator to monitor the state of the system and feed step-specific data to the enhanced procedures.
• Enhanced Procedure Viewer -- We have developed a novel Enhanced Procedure Viewer (EPV). This EPV integrates dynamic data from sensors directly into the procedure in real time, providing the crewmember enhanced situational awareness and progress tracking. The green and red sensor data statements allow the participant to know when a step has been completed correctly, avoiding the need for them to go back later to fix a missed step. Other enhancements include on-when-needed laser indicators to highlight items on the physical generator, caution/warning statements in the procedures, and videos on complex steps to provide additional context and support for the crewmember. Navigation of the procedure via up and down arrow buttons and a moving blue step indicator help to keep track of procedure progress and reduce errors from missed steps.
• Despite severe pandemic limitations for working in team settings or traveling, Year 1&2 has seen the Multimodal team and the NASA HERA support team work closely together to prepare for Campaign 6. At this point, two fully-modified generators have been shipped to NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC), have been assembled per a detailed assembly guide that we produced, and have been tested by HERA support engineers while on zoom calls with University of California (UC) Davis research staff. We also have a third modified generator at UC Davis ready to be shipped to HERA after planned pilot studies are complete, prior to Campaign 6.
Results: A series of small-scale pilot studies have been conducted at UC Davis during the development of the sensorized spaceflight analogs and the new Enhanced Procedure Viewer. As an example of the type of data output from the EPV execution log, we can plot the elapsed time spent on each step of the procedure.
Discussion: Pandemic-related schedule delays for the start of HERA Campaign 6 have actually been beneficial to the anticipated scientific value of the Multimodal HCAAM experiment. We have been able to use the extra time to run additional cycles of the design/test process for the IoT sensor system and the Enhanced Procedure Viewer.
Next Steps: Year 3 will see additional preparation steps plus execution of the first two missions of HERA Campaign 6, starting in September 2021. These steps include:
• Since our HERA experiment design combines four different factors in the enhancement of the generator procedures, we will conduct four human-subject experiment pilot studies at UC Davis to consider the relative influence of each of these factors alone, plus a control study with no procedure enhancements. Each study will include 16-20 subjects and will be conducted at UC Davis using detailed no-contact experimental protocols that we have developed for Covid safety. We anticipate that the control experiment plus two of the four single-effect experiments will be completed during Year 3. (These experiments are not required to be complete prior to Campaign 6, but will be necessary to analyze crew data collected in HERA.)
• Although we will have three identical experimental spacecraft analogs (modified generators) at HERA during Campaign 6, we are developing a plan to replace, repair, and re-introduce generators as sensor systems fail. This plan will utilize NASA JSC interns as repair volunteers, trained and supervised by current UC Davis students.
• With the recent announcement of the slip of Campaign 6 to September 2021, we are rebuilding our logistics support plan for funding, travel, and balancing student research responsibilities with the demands of coursework and required academic projects.
• Of course, our primary objective during Year 3 is the collecting and analyzing C6 experimental data.
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