Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Human Performance”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 955 records · Page 53
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1996

Distant Operational Care Centre: Design Project Report

The goal of this project is to outline the design of the Distant Operational Care Centre (DOCC), a modular medical facility to maintain human health and performance in space, that is adaptable to a range of remote human habitats. The purpose of this project is to outline a design, not to go into a complete technical specification of a medical facility for space. This project involves a process to produce a concise set of requirements, addressing the fundamental problems and issues regarding all aspects of a space medical facility for the future. The ideas presented here are at a high level, based on existing, researched, and hypothetical technologies. Given the long development times for space exploration, the outlined concepts from this project embodies a collection of identified problems, and corresponding proposed solutions and ideas, ready to contribute to future space exploration efforts. In order to provide a solid extrapolation and speculation in the context of the future of space medicine, the extent of this project's vision is roughly within the next two decades. The Distant Operational Care Centre (DOCC) is a modular medical facility for space. That is, its function is to maintain human health and performance in space environments, through prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Furthermore, the DOCC must be adaptable to meet the environmental requirements of different remote human habitats, and support a high quality of human performance. To meet a diverse range of remote human habitats, the DOCC concentrates on a core medical capability that can then be adapted. Adaptation would make use of the DOCC's functional modularity, providing the ability to replace, add, and modify core functions of the DOCC by updating hardware, operations, and procedures. Some of the challenges to be addressed by this project include what constitutes the core medical capability in terms of hardware, operations, and procedures, and how DOCC can be adapted to different remote habitats.

Source record↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Integrating Human System Information with the Systems Platform for Aggregating and Relating Capabilities (SPARC)

Within Human Health and Performance, there exists a wealth of human system information that’s used a regular basis in support of NASA human exploration objectives, but the challenge is that all of this information was stored in multiple different locations and organized for specific uses, limiting its effectiveness and straining communication across multiple groups. To address this challenge, our project, the Systems Platform for Aggregating and Relating Capabilities (SPARC) was tasked with developing a new NASA internal web application that aggregates and relates multiple programs’ human system products, such as technical standards, program requirements and verifications, human system risks, research and evidence, and exploration capabilities, into one centralized platform that addresses the needs of human health and performance from multiple different perspectives. Using agile development methodologies, user-experience (UX) driven design principles, data visualization, and a strong emphasis on continuous improvement though consistent stakeholder engagement, the SPARC project released a beta version in less than 4 months, broadly launched version 1.0.0 Agency-wide three months after the beta, and has over 180 users in the first year of development. Our second year of development will see us moving from our initial capabilities to increasingly robust and complex integrations and visualizations, including Directed Acyclical Graphs (DAGs), natural language processing (NLP) for dynamic generation of relationships between the sources of truth, and an expansion into hierarchical levels of system design in support of the human exploration programs.

Data science↗
NASA NTRS2015

Human-Robot Interaction

Human-robot interaction (HRI) is a discipline investigating the factors affecting the interactions between humans and robots. It is important to evaluate how the design of interfaces affect the human's ability to perform tasks effectively and efficiently when working with a robot. By understanding the effects of interface design on human performance, workload, and situation awareness, interfaces can be developed to appropriately support the human in performing tasks with minimal errors and with appropriate interaction time and effort. Thus, the results of research on human-robot interfaces have direct implications for the design of robotic systems. For efficient and effective remote navigation of a rover, a human operator needs to be aware of the robot's environment. However, during teleoperation, operators may get information about the environment only through a robot's front-mounted camera causing a keyhole effect. The keyhole effect reduces situation awareness which may manifest in navigation issues such as higher number of collisions, missing critical aspects of the environment, or reduced speed. One way to compensate for the keyhole effect and the ambiguities operators experience when they teleoperate a robot is adding multiple cameras and including the robot chassis in the camera view. Augmented reality, such as overlays, can also enhance the way a person sees objects in the environment or in camera views by making them more visible. Scenes can be augmented with integrated telemetry, procedures, or map information. Furthermore, the addition of an exocentric (i.e., third-person) field of view from a camera placed in the robot's environment may provide operators with the additional information needed to gain spatial awareness of the robot. Two research studies investigated possible mitigation approaches to address the keyhole effect: 1) combining the inclusion of the robot chassis in the camera view with augmented reality overlays, and 2) modifying the camera frame of reference. The first study investigated the effects of inclusion and exclusion of the robot chassis along with superimposing a simple arrow overlay onto the video feed of operator task performance during teleoperation of a mobile robot in a driving task. In this study, the front half of the robot chassis was made visible through the use of three cameras, two side-facing and one forward-facing. The purpose of the second study was to compare operator performance when teleoperating a robot from an egocentric-only and combined (egocentric plus exocentric camera) view. Camera view parameters that are found to be beneficial in these laboratory experiments can be implemented on NASA rovers and tested in a real-world driving and navigation scenario on-site at the Johnson Space Center.

Sandor, Aniko↗
DOE OSTI2016

Performance and Costs of Ductless Heat Pumps in Marine-Climate High-Performance Homes -- Habitat for Humanity The Woods

The Woods is a Habitat for Humanity (HFH) community of ENERGY STAR Homes Northwest (ESHNW)-certified homes located in the marine climate of Tacoma/Pierce County, Washington. This research report builds on an earlier preliminary draft 2014 BA report, and includes significant billing analysis and cost effectiveness research from a collaborative, ongoing Ductless Heat Pump (DHP)research effort for Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU) and Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). This report focuses on the results of field testing, modeling, and monitoring of ductless mini-split heat pump hybrid heating systems in seven homes built and first occupied at various times between September 2013 and October 2014. The report also provides WSU documentation of high-performance home observations, lessons learned, and stakeholder recommendations for builders of affordable high-performance housing such as HFH. Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU) and Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). This report focuses on the results of field testing, modeling, and monitoring of ductless mini-split heat pump hybrid heating systems in seven homes built and first occupied at various times between September 2013 and October 2014. The report also provides WSU documentation of high-performance home observations, lessons learned, and stakeholder recommendations for builders of affordable high-performance housing such as HFH.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2016

Building America Case Study: Performance and Costs of Ductless Heat Pumps in Marine Climate High-Performance Homes: Habitat for Humanity -- The Woods, Tacoma, Washington

The Woods is a Habitat for Humanity (HFH) community of ENERGY STAR Homes (c) Northwest (ESHNW)-certified homes located in the marine climate of Tacoma/Pierce County, Washington. This research report builds on an earlier preliminary draft 2014 BA report, and includes significant billing analysis and cost effectiveness research from a collaborative, ongoing Ductless Heat Pump (DHP) research effort for Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU) and Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). This report focuses on the results of field testing, modeling, and monitoring of ductless mini-split heat pump hybrid heating systems in seven homes built and first occupied at various times between September 2013 and October 2014. The report also provides WSU documentation of high-performance home observations, lessons learned, and stakeholder recommendations for builders of affordable high-performance housing such as HFH.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
NASA NTRS2009

SDBI 1904: Human Factors Assessment of Vibration Effects on Visual Performance during Launch

The primary objective of the of Human Factors Short Duration Bioastronautics Investigation (SDBI) 1904 is to determine visual performance limits during operational vibration and g-loads, specifically through the determination of minimal usable font sizes using Orion-type display formats. Currently there is little to no data available to quantify human visual performance under these extreme conditions. Existing data on shuttle vibration magnitude and frequency is incomplete, does not address seat and crew vibration in the current configuration, and does not address human visual performance. There have been anecdotal reports of performance decrements from shuttle crews, but no structured data has been collected. The SDBI is a companion effort to the Detailed Test Objective (DTO) 695, which will measure shuttle seat accelerations (vibration) during ascent. Data from the SDBI will serve an important role in interpreting the DTO vibration data. This data will be collected during the ascent phase of three shuttle missions (STS-119, 127, and 128). Both SDBI1904 and DTO 695 are low impact with respect to flight resources, and combined they represent an efficient and focused problem solving approach. The SDBI and DTO data will be correlated to determine the nature of perceived visual performance under varying vibrations and g-loads. This project will provide: * Immediate data for developing preliminary human performance vibration requirements * Flight validated inputs for ongoing and future ground-based research * Information of functional needs that will drive Orion display format design decisions

Shelby G Thompson↗
DOE OSTI2017

A HUMAN AUTOMATION INTERACTION CONCEPT FOR A SMALL MODULAR REACTOR CONTROL ROOM

Many advanced nuclear power plant (NPP) designs incorporate higher degrees of automation than the existing fleet of NPPs. Automation is being introduced or proposed in NPPs through a wide variety of systems and technologies, such as advanced displays, computer-based procedures, advanced alarm systems, and computerized operator support systems. Additionally, many new reactor concepts, both full scale and small modular reactors, are proposing increased automation and reduced staffing as part of their concept of operations. However, research consistently finds that there is a fundamental tradeoff between system performance with increased automation and reduced human performance. There is a need to address the question of how to achieve high performance and efficiency of high levels of automation without degrading human performance. One example of a new NPP concept that will utilize greater degrees of automation is the SMR concept from NuScale Power. The NuScale Power design requires 12 modular units to be operated in one single control room, which leads to a need for higher degrees of automation in the control room. Idaho National Laboratory (INL) researchers and NuScale Power human factors and operations staff are working on a collaborative project to address the human performance challenges of increased automation and to determine the principles that lead to optimal performance in highly automated systems. This paper will describe this concept in detail and will describe an experimental test of the concept. The benefits and challenges of the approach will be discussed.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2014

SU-E-I-30: Image Analysis in Ultrasonography for Diagnosis of Sjoegren's Syndrome Using Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet Transform

Purpose: Sjoegren's syndrome (SS) is an autoimmune disease invading mainly salivary and lacrimal glands. Ultrasonography is used for an initial and non-invasive examination of this disease. However, the ultrasonography diagnosis tends to lack in objectivity and depends on the operator's skills. The purpose of this study is to propose a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for SS based on a dual-tree complex wavelet transform (DT-CWT) and machine learning. Methods: The subjects of this study were 174 patients suspected of having SS at Nagasaki University Hospital and examined with ultrasonography of the parotid glands. Out of these patients, 77 patients were diagnosed with SS by sialography. A region of interest (ROI) of 128 × 128 pixels was set within the parotid gland that was indicated by a dental radiologist. The DT-CWT was applied to the images in the ROI and every image was decomposed into 72 sub-images of the real and imaginary components in six different resolution levels and six orientations. The statistical features of the sub-image were calculated and used as data input for the support vector machine (SVM) classifier for the detection of SS. A ten-fold cross-validation was employed to verify the Resultof SVM. The accuracy of diagnosis was compared by a CAD system with a human observer performance. Results: The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy in the detection of SS were 95%, 86%, and 91% through our CAD system respectively, while those by a human observer were 84%, 81%, and 83% respectively. Conclusion: The proposed computer-aided diagnosis system for Sjoegren's syndrome in ultrasonography based on dual-tree complex wavelet transform had a better performance than a human observer.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2011

Human-Robot Interaction Directed Research Project

Human-robot interaction (HRI) is about understanding and shaping the interactions between humans and robots (Goodrich & Schultz, 2007). It is important to evaluate how the design of interfaces and command modalities affect the human s ability to perform tasks accurately, efficiently, and effectively (Crandall, Goodrich, Olsen Jr., & Nielsen, 2005) It is also critical to evaluate the effects of human-robot interfaces and command modalities on operator mental workload (Sheridan, 1992) and situation awareness (Endsley, Bolt , & Jones, 2003). By understanding the effects of interface design on human performance, workload, and situation awareness, interfaces can be developed that support the human in performing tasks with minimal errors and with appropriate interaction time and effort. Thus, the results of research on human-robot interfaces have direct implications for design. Because the factors associated with interfaces and command modalities in HRI are too numerous to address in 3 years of research, the proposed research concentrates on three manageable areas applicable to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) robot systems. These topic areas emerged from the Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 work that included extensive literature reviews and observations of NASA systems. The three topic areas are: 1) video overlays, 2) camera views, and 3) command modalities. Each area is described in detail below, along with relevance to existing NASA human-robot systems. In addition to studies in these three topic areas, a workshop is proposed for FY12. The workshop will bring together experts in human-robot interaction and robotics to discuss the state of the practice as applicable to research in space robotics. Studies proposed in the area of video overlays consider two factors in the implementation of augmented reality (AR) for operator displays during teleoperation. The first of these factors is the type of navigational guidance provided by AR symbology. In the proposed studies, participants performance during teleoperation of a robot arm will be compared when they are provided with command-guidance symbology (that is, directing the operator what commands to make) or situation-guidance symbology (that is, providing natural cues so that the operator can infer what commands to make). The second factor for AR symbology is the effects of overlays that are either superimposed or integrated into the external view of the world. A study is proposed in which the effects of superimposed and integrated overlays on operator task performance during teleoperated driving tasks are compared

Rochlis, Jennifer↗
NASA NTRS2008

The Effects of Terrain and Navigation on Human Extravehicular Activity Walkback Performance on the Moon

Results of the EVA Walkback Test showed that 6 male astronauts were able to ambulate 10 km on a level treadmill while wearing a prototype EVA suit in simulated lunar gravity. However, the effects of lunar terrain, topography, and real-time navigation on ambulation performance are unknown. Primary objective: To characterize the effect of lunar-like terrain and navigation on VO2 and distance traveled during an unsuited 10 km (straight-line distance) ambulatory return in earth gravity.

Norcross, Jason↗
NASA NTRS2009

Management of Service Projects in Support of Space Flight Research

Goal:To provide human health and performance countermeasures, knowledge, technologies, and tools to enable safe, reliable, and productive human space exploration . [HRP-47051] Specific Objectives: 1) Develop capabilities, necessary countermeasures, and technologies in support of human space exploration, focusing on mitigating the highest risks to human health and performance. 2) Define and improve human spaceflight medical, environmental, and human factors standards. 3) Develop technologies that serve to reduce medical and environmental risks, to reduce human systems resource requirements (mass, volume, power, data, etc.) and to ensure effective human-system integration across exploration systems. 4) Ensure maintenance of Agency core competencies necessary to enable risk reduction in the following areas: A. Space medicine B. Physiological and behavioral effects of long duration spaceflight on the human body C. Space environmental effects, including radiation, on human health and performance D. Space "human factors" [HRP-47051]. Service projects can form integral parts of research-based project-focused programs to provide specialized functions. Traditional/classic project management methodologies and agile approaches are not mutually exclusive paradigms. Agile strategies can be combined with traditional methods and applied in the management of service projects functioning in changing environments. Creative collaborations afford a mechanism for mitigation of constrained resource limitations.

Love, J.↗