This work has been peer-reviewed and published! You can find it at the link below: Underwater Virtual Reality for Neutral Buoyancy Training: Development and Evaluation.

Summary

Astronauts must train extensively for activities conducted in space on terrestrial facilities like the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at Johnson Space Center. These training facilities place replica spacecraft in a neutrally-buoyant pool, providing a high-fidelty training environment that also mimics the loss of non-visual sensory information experienced in space. Maintenance and use of these facilities is expensive, however, and here we explore a lower-cost alternative using virtual reality. We developed custom training software alongside a head-mounted display integrated into a full-face SCUBA dive mask, then successfully pilot test this system with untrained users both above water and in a neutrally buoyant underwater environment.

Roles: Project lead, hardware prototyper, lead data analyst, lead experimenter, lead author

More to come!!!