(Feb 23, 2012)

A second visuomotor control study, looking at "combined whole-body vibration plus G-loading effects on human visuomotor performance", was completed at the 20-g centrifuge at NASA Ames Research center. The goal of this study is to fill some of the current knowledge gaps in our understanding of human performance that are hampering robust vehicle design and mission planning. The ultimate goal is to use these data to begin developing/validating predictive computational models of human sensorimotor performance that can be used by future mission and vehicle designers planning for human exploration beyond low-earth orbit.

As NASA plans for human exploration beyond low-earth orbit, it intends to have human crews fully engaged in mission-critical activities (e.g., display monitoring, re-setting of switches, pushing buttons) during all phases of flight including launch and re-entry, periods where the crew will be subjected to significantly elevated gravito-inertial and vibration loads. To properly design the interface systems and plan crew operations, mission managers will need to predict how human performance may be altered during these dynamic phases of flight.

The project is collecting human-performance in a various aerospace-relevant tasks during sustained G-loading (chest-to-spine) at 3.8 g with superimposed vibration at 8, 12, and 16 Hz, as well as a no-vibration baseline. The original rapid-reaching task run last Fall had three components to it to dissect the contributions of each of the major sub-elements (vestibular, visual, and biomechanical/proprioceptive) to the overall impact of G-plus-vibration loading on human target acquisition. Preliminary results indicate that there are significant increases in response times and decreases in accuracy/precision in our experimental conditions. These finding were presented last week at the annual HRP meeting in Houston, TX. Data acquisition for the second study will be completed this week. The new experimental task is a gaze-tracking task to measure visual motion processing and smooth oculomotor control under combined G-loading and vibration.