Our ALPHA-XR research programme is almost finished at LunAres habitat and majority of the equipment from our XR Lab PJAIT lab is already packed and secured to travel back home. Now we are ready to continue our research back on Earth in our lab together with our Commander to benefit from his experience in the challenges of human space exploration from ESA and the interdisciplinary research support of the rest of the team and colleagues from the HASE research group.
Once again we’ve moved forward at the frontiers of HCI. It was a small step for our crew, but an important one that marks an interesting research direction for XR studies. Thank you LunAres for hosting us this time. Over and out.
Did we mention yesterday’s small emergency? Just before we were done with our EVA there was a blackout, stranding our crew on the lunar surface without any way to get back in for over an hour. Luckily, our SWAMP shelter was fully outfitted, and they could wait it out, while the Commander and the First Officer tried to figure out what was going on. What was going on were larger issues with the local infrastructure and we’ve managed them thanks to ground support.
Once power was back and the last EVA was completed the crew started to secure and pack the equipment provided by XR Lab PJAIT and partners from HASE research initiative, including various VR and XR headsets form Varjo, HTC and Oculus as well as 3D scanners and printers, robots, eye trackers, body trackers, BCI interfaces and psychophysiological measurement devices. It was definitely a very intense two weeks for our crew and equipment.
Of course, we’re writing about the emergency and packing, as we don’t want to think what’s coming up, which is today is touchdown day. We’d do anything to distract ourselves, we’re cleaning up, finishing reports, shuffling boxes, playing with some tech and in general feeling moody. We’ve also just completed last tests with our XR Lab newest AR headset Hololens 2 to extend previous VR and XR tests in the context of rapid prototyping new concepts for space suits. There were some comparative tests to do at the end of our trip, so we had the cognitive inhibition measures, saliva sample collection (during which we listened to the “Sad 60s” playlist on Spotify) and some tests in VR. But now it’s time to pack up everything into boxes and get ready to face the spotlight ‘cause the papers will want to know whose shirts we wear.
Our last full day makes us feel a little nostalgic. The breakfast was a bit quiet as we pondered the return to real life, and we actually longed for our science call at 8:30. Yes, by now we know the times of our momentary psychological assessment, but still, it usually takes us by surprise, when we’re engaged with other things and we all say “DAMN SCIENCE”. We’re playing VR games, catching up on paperwork and chilling, as the projects we needed for the last EVA have mostly concluded. We’ve successfully upgraded the suits to have ventilation and air filtration systems, with the help of our glorious Engineer and some 3D printing, now these need to be tested during a lunar marathon.
Moon dust is actually one of the worst challenges to overcome before we can easily make a lunar base. Lunar regolith is coarse, jagged and very fine, and it easily breaks equipment and sticks to everything. But let’s forget the dust! On the side, we’ve been making ice-cream, using canned fruit and milk, but the last night on the Moon is a call for some celebration – if not for all of the reports our Commander wants to have on his desk by the end of the day to give us feedback. The last EVA will complete our work on the SWAMP shelter and we intend to have the crew participate in the photo shoot with the robots we’ve brought from Warsaw. Also, all of us want to test out the upgraded suits, so there’s going to be a lot of trying things on and posing for photos 🙂
It’s almost the end of the mission and we’re picking up the pace. Reports won’t write themselves and we want the next crews to be able to continue our projects! There’s the SWAMP upgrade, the VKK helmet, the DOC helmet, the biolab hydroponics and aeroponics systems and the BORP suit. All of these benefited from our creative flair!
We’ve been doing prototyping, testing, scrapping everything and starting again, more prototyping and up to pre-final designs printed in parts on our Prusa 3D printers. Our Engineer has been fabulous! Whatever we requested we’ve gotten. Together with the Bollywood pin which indicates our landing spot, and which was created in honour of our every-non-EVA-day Bollywood dance workout! We have a shared YouTube playlist, which includes all of the best workouts we’ve done together.
Also, our XR Officer completed the third and final session of our VR experiences as well as 3D scans with our FARO 3D laser scanner, so it is totally possible we may come back to this habitat in the future, not only by visiting Piła, but also joining others in VR, to have brainstorming sessions together, just like today in the afternoon when we talked about the hackathon that is about to happen at PJAIT after we arrive back home.
We’ve had a slower day, which was necessary as we’re definitely feeling the effects of isolation, with lowered performance, trouble concentrating and learning new things. This is why the calendar in our central hub saves us from getting lost here completely. We’re also writing journals every day as part of an ethnographic photo-research of our Media Officer, and keeping track of our moods with an application for regular momentary assessment, a part of a study in collaboration with EC Lab, of SWPS.
But there is a lot more ground to cover in terms of psychological effects of isolation on well-being. We’ve also noticed we’re getting impatient with the outside world, it feels like the metronome of people we interact with from Mission and Research Control works much slower than ours, and we were getting impatient during audio meetings. The meetings we now conduct in VR, using Oculus Quest 2 (as it is fast to set up and easy to use in office spaces) are much more engaging and no longer feel frustrating. We have a lot of insights into problems of people thrown into ICE conditions, but we know these effects are also what happens during space missions.
This is the first step to finding solutions that work, including VR activities. To take care of our well-being now we’ve become very creative cooks. So far, from our astronaut-healthy ingredients and an electric stove top we’ve managed to produce a mac&cheese, a tarik, various versions of curry as well as, amazingly, a pie and a pizza!
Today we’ve had the second batch of individual VR tests in three different environments. This experimental study is a part of a joint research of vnLab of National Film School in Lodz, VR and Psychophysiology Lab of Institute of Psychology Polish Academy of Sciences, Laboratory of Interactive Technologies National Information Processing Institute, XR Lab Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology and Living Lab Kobo.
The rest of the crew was preparing for the fourth EVA with two primary goals. To 3D scan the lunar surface of the EVA area (Team 1, XR Officer) and to fix the SWAMP shelter airlock and outfit it with a layer of insulation (to prevent the future EVA crews who plan an overnight stay from feeling “a bit chilly”. We’ve planned the excursion for 3 hours in suits, but it has taken 4. In hindsight, we should have taken with us more water, as our Med Officer asked us to do. Despite expected discomfort, constraining suits and tedious work we’ve managed to make significant progress on both tasks. The 3D scanning of the entire LunAres Research Facility is actually almost complete, so that we can later recreate it in VR, to help further prototyping of solutions that may help facilitate human factors research in ICE conditions.
In the morning we’ve welcomed our heroes returning from the night in the SWAMP! They’re mostly well, if a bit tired and cold but we could tell they were happy to see us. After all, we’ve welcomed them with inka coffee in our hands ;). We’ve had open radio throughout the night, and reestablished connection at 7.30, so they could be back by 9, and all happened according to schedule. This perfectly sets the mood for our participatory design session happening in the afternoon. We’ve got a lot of observations from these last days, which we’re writing down in journals, as part of ethnographic research for the Media Officer, who is doing her thesis on the Return to the Moon. We’ve printed some photos with the Xiaomi Mini Printer to include in our journals and we’re trying to catch our breath today, as more EVAs and tasks await us in the following days.
Our Engineer is 3D printing a mounting plate for three centrifugal fans we’re attaching to the old VKK helmet to make it into a functional life support system. And, we’re making a cake – without sugar – did we mention we’re eating clean with no sugar and no coffee? We’re also working out every day, both in VR using Beat Saber, Pistol Whip and Audiotrip and Half-Life Alyx 😉 and from a shared YouTube playlist we’ve created on the central HabCom account, which all day displays our calendar and tasks for each day. Without it we’d be completely lost in time and space.
Morning started with a lot of physiological tests, EDA, ECG – it’s like we’ve gotten all we could have out of these FitBits! All of this to establish a baseline for the arousal monitoring that was coupled with the tests of different VR environments for well-being. So the start of the day was quite relaxing, to keep our strength for what was to come.
On the first EVA prep meeting we’ve planned the actions necessary to have our two astronauts stay overnight in the SWAMP shelter on the surface of the Moon. It seemed so far away at that time, but finally, on our third EVA we brought the materials and tools necessary to install an airlock and despite multiple failures of the prototype BORP suit, we’ve managed to complete the install. The HabCom had eyes on us through the LEO rover throughout the operation, and we even managed to install a functioning dust sensor out in the surface, to know what ventilation and filter systems we ought to make for the other suits.
After the primary tasks were completed we took out the TIGER rover for its first ride. Despite it not being built for this surface it performed well and sent very good quality data back to HabCom. We tested Human-Robot Interaction and Collaboration by having it point at different Solar Panels and getting a reading from the EVA astronauts. Our two more prototype robots, from our PJAIT robotic workshop also joined it in the airlock so that we could assist their usability in these conditions. Afterwards our XO made her way back to the habitat, while the Med Officer and the Engineer stayed the night out, for what has become the longest EVA in the history of LunAres Habitat and Research Station.
It was the dreaded day for the crew, as their love of science forced them to participate in the experiment of how freeze-dried diet can affect their dental health, which includes gathering large samples of saliva. The rest you can imagine.
However, next came some fun with VR, testing a Varjo VR-1 and XR-1 headset with the central resolution of the human eye in preparation for our brainstorming session on the uses of XR, VR and AR in missions like ours, in analogue habitats and later out in space. This led us to unexpected places, such as discussing the helmet of F35 fighter jet pilots. We mourned how technology is developed for warfare instead of speeding up the progress of the human race.
In between everything else we were creating an airlock for the SWAMP shelter to allow our adventurous crew to sleep there overnight. Before that happens we’ll have to troubleshoot the dust sensor in there to try to get a remote reading. Night discussions somehow delved into physics and the observer’s paradox, but we couldn’t stay on this topic for long as we still had much to do, there were still trackers to set up and applications to test.
The morning started with catching up on work reports from yesterday. Yes, there is reporting in space! As we are doing both our own XR experiments and projects necessary for the planned EVAs we’ve got lots to do! The EVA missions really help the crew feel how it is to walk in the shoes of astronauts (literally!), which allows them to conduct research in the ecological validity conditions of the simulated Moon environment. This time our XO went out in a test prototype suit called BORP, which we hope to outfit with a Hololens, while our XR Officer upholds the space tradition with a suit called PUMA based on a historical VKK helmet fighter jet outfit. In the evening the crew relaxed playing Half-Life Alyx, while their devices were charging for the research sessions that were to come the following morning, some pleasant, like XR prototyping, some less, like saliva collection.
The crew also has started scanning the habitat using a 3D laser scanner provided by the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology. This will allow the XR Lab research team to transfer the habitat into Virtual (VR), Augmented (AR) or even eXtended (XR) reality environments. Such immersive environments can not only serve future analog astronauts, but can also provide a unique space habitat experience to a wider audience!
