Spacesuit Mobility Researcher | Sept 2018 - June 2019

SUIT LAB

ERAU Spacesuit Utilization of Innovative Technology Laboratory (S.U.I.T. Lab)

The SUIT Lab was founded under the degree of Space Flight Operations in the College of Aviation at ERAU. During my time there Dr. Ryan Kobrick was the lab's facilitator. The lab's mission was on the study of commercial intravehicular activity (IVA) spacesuit mobility. Our lab utilized pressure suits manufactured by Final Frontier Design, which feature a unique self-regulated pressure valve, and a high degree of adjustability to fit a greater range of anthropometries.

IVA Research

The SUIT Lab conducted research with Final Frontier Design to analyze the mobility and constraints of their spacesuit. I gained hands on experience learning how to wear and maintain their pressurized IVA spacesuit which in return improved the process of developing the mobility procedures. Additionally, I learned how to use the OptiTrack's motion capture system which was used to record and cleanse the data. My most important role in the SUIT Lab was to analyze and interpret the data in MATALB.

Range of Motion Procedures

The lab used reflective tracking markers on three recruited unexperienced participants (ERAU Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved) of similar physical size (height, weight, girth, and foot size), and recorded a set of arm ROM using four OptiTrack’s infrared motion capture system. ROM activities included: Shoulder Abduction Adduction (AA); vertical and horizontal shoulder flexion/extension (VFE and HFE); and vertical and horizontal shoulder full-arm carveouts. The subject's collected data was under three conditions: no suit, unpressurized suit, and pressurized suit.

ROM Angular Data

MATLAB was chosen as an analysis tool for this ROM research due to its proficiency with matrices and plot creation. The MATLAB Angular Analysis Program determined what type of ROM the subject had performed based on its corresponding plane from the .xls file generated from OptiTrack. The program then determined how many repetitions (Rep) the test subject performed. MATLAB’s findpeaks function from the signal processing toolbox was used to locate the local maxima. After all the key coordinates were gathered, the next phase was to find the angle per repetition and the average angle per test condition between the two vectors.

002 Suited Pressurized Isometric View.png

Reach Envelope Volumetric

MATLAB Reach Envelope Volumetric Analysis Program is able to estimate the shape and volume of the area carved out by the recorded subject for all test conditions. “Volume” for this research is loosely defined solely for % Ret comparisons. Using this data, a reach envelope can be created for each arm using MATLAB’s alphashape function. Points which are not on the outermost bounds are not considered in the creation of the shape mesh, similarly to how convex hull algorithms work. Alphashape creates a shape mesh using the Delaunay triangulation algorithm, which connects points to their proximal neighbors based on a specified radius.

Technical Conference

The research conducted with Final Frontier Design was published at 2019 International Conference on Environmental Systems (ICES) Where my colleague Nicholas Lopac and I attended the 2019 ICES conference and presented our work.

Check Out The Paper!

Research Continuation

The S.U.I.T Lab continued research in a partnership with Florida Institute of Technology (F.I.T). The same procedures were done but with more Opti-Track Sensors and an improvement on the placement of the sensor markers alignment to the test subject.

Check Out The Paper!

Out Reach

Participated and hosted numerous outreach events to promote the lab and the research projects associated with it. Outreach events include school open house events, educational talks with middle schoolers, and Yuri's night. An event hosted at NASA to celebrate the first man who entered space, shown in the picture on the right with former Astronaut Nicole Stott.