A Wichita State interdisciplinary group was selected to participate in a NASA design challenge. NASA’s Spacesuit User Interface Technologies for Students Design Challenge tasks CosmoShox, a student research and development team, with creating a display for a pressurized vehicle.
Students at 10 universities across America were selected to create designs for a display for a pressurized vehicle or an augmented reality heads-up display. Columbia University is designing the augmented reality heads-up display. The AR heads-up display allows the user to see important information overlaid onto the real world around them. The two displays will be created to integrate with each other.
“It’s a proposal,” WSU game design major and team lead Dameron Cook said. “So we have to, basically, write up this whole … 40 or 50 page paper basically, explaining what we’re going to make, and then … a lot of designs of what it’s going to look like.”
The CosmoShox team has a design for the display in the works currently, which includes tasks for astronauts to do, the astronauts’ vitals (which turn red if in a critical state) and information on different samples picked up on a ride.
Developer of the design challenge John Mulnix put the idea simply:
“The user interface is … is just like a standard computer monitor with a keyboard, mouse and then the backup Xbox controller,” he said.
The Xbox controller is for manual control of the pressurized rover.
The idea of the challenge is to give college students real life experience and put them in the mindset of a NASA designer.
“All the stuff that we’re doing is technically NASA’s,” WSU exercise science student Bella Neish said. “It’s one, to get us in the state-of-mind of thinking how NASA wants their people to be thinking, and just giving us, kind of just an experience … working with tech, working on a team.”
The design challenge also allows NASA to have a variety of ideas to pick and choose from to make the best final product. Ultimately, pieces of the CosmoShox design will be integrated into a display for a pressurized vehicle used on the moon as part of the Artemis missions. While the system is not yet perfected, the team is hoping it will be before their trip at the end of May to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, for a final design review.
