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| The objective of the Intelligent Spacecraft Interface Systems (ISIS) laboratory is to enhance mission safety and crew efficiency in next-generation spacecraft by evaluating the operational impacts of environmental stressors and by developing and testing advanced operations concepts and crew-vehicle interfaces. |
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The ISIS team is developing and evaluating operational concepts for onboard management of systems malfunctions during dynamic phases of flight on the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle.
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A Human Oculomotor Performance (HOP) model is being developed to accurately predict human performance in complex multi-tasking and divided attention environments.
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Orion crews may experience elevated levels of whole-body vibration that interfere with their ability to process alphanumeric symbology and monitor vehicle health and status on cockpit displays. We are currently investigating the extent of this problem and possible mitigation strategies.
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NASA is designing a new spacecraft, Orion, to replace the shuttles, return astronauts to the moon, and transport them to more distant destinations. Orion is providing designers with many challenging issues in the areas of vehicle operations and crew-vehicle interfaces. Some day, Orion will be supporting missions far beyond low-earth orbit, where speed-of-light limitations will limit opportunities for ground personnel to provide real-time operational assistance to the crews. To enable these missions, advanced automation technologies will be needed that assist the crew with time-critical vehicle operations, such as responding to a sudden systems malfunction. Many options for human-computer function allocation are now possible, and today's advanced user interface technologies have greatly expanded the options for crew-machine interface design. Designers must choose the best overall design option that most effectively blends and coordinates human and machine activities.
Other operational challenges are arising from the fact that during ascent, Orion crews are going to be exposed to vibration levels that may exceed those of the Apollo era. Although the vibration environment will be well within established human health limits, we do not yet have a thorough understanding of the crew's ability to extract and utilize information from proposed Orion glass display formats under high vibration conditions.
The Intelligent Spacecraft Interface Systems (ISIS) laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center provides a part-task simulation environment for human-in-the-loop evaluation of advanced human-machine teaming concepts and vibration effects on display legibility, task performance, workload, and situation awareness. Unique among facilities that simulate spacecraft operations and environments, ISIS is equipped with a suite of human performance and human-system interaction measurement tools, including audio-video recordings, event files, high-fidelity eye-movement recording and data analysis software, and electronic interfaces for collecting workload ratings. This tool set, and the associated human factors expertise provided by ARC ISIS personnel, provides a unique capability to conduct microanalyses of crew information acquisition activities during targeted vehicle operations, down to the individual eye fixation level. This level of task decomposition and analysis is required to determine, for example, the usefulness and efficacy of individual elements and components of cockpit display formats, information that can then inform and guide display evaluations and display redesign cycles.
The most recent projects in the ISIS lab have been human factors evaluations of the impact of Orion flight-like vibration on display readability, crew member's ability to maintain situation awareness of vehicle flight status by cross-checking flight indicators on a primary flight display, and manual flight control. In addition, ongoing analyses of oculomotor (eye-movement) behavior are supporting the development of a computational human performance model that can predict how well an operator will perform a given operational concept. |
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