Human Digital Twin Platform (HDTP)

Human Digital Twin Platform (HDTP) is a virtual counterpart of a person’s biological and physiological presence in the Metaverse. HDTP will enable the creation of a custom, real-time 3D, photo-realistic avatar and combines it with an always-on, real-time physiological monitoring system that uses COTS wearable biosensors. These biosensors measure and monitor the user’s vitals, sleep, and other health and readiness factors critical to supporting NASA's mission of a sustained presence on the Moon, Mars and the subsequent human expansion across the solar system. Long-duration spaceflight or staying onboard a space station results in neuromuscular decline and cardiovascular deconditioning, leading to physical fitness and wellness deterioration. This reduced fitness is well documented in microgravity environments. Reduction in aerobic capacity, muscular strength, and endurance could impair the performance, crew safety, and mission success. The level of readiness necessary for performing routine and off-nominal terrestrial mission tasks remains an unanswered question for scientists and flight physicians. To mitigate fitness and readiness loss during spaceflight, astronauts and future space explorers need an affordable and accessible constant monitoring system that measures biometrics and readiness levels. This will be tracked on individual and team dashboards, and the Platform will suggest effective countermeasures such as resistance and aerobic exercise. Our proposed HDTP will provide human performance monitoring and fuses this data with each explorer's digital twin in XR. AI/ML algorithms trained on data sets collected on earth and in microgravity will provide real-time, “predictive” rather than “reactive” approaches in XR-based training environments. Tracking and mitigating cognitive, emotional, and physiological fatigue during high-stress training tasks will provide NASA team members and space explorers the performance edge to complete their mission successfully.

NASA’s Human Health and Performance (HH&P) Directorate and associated branches can leverage the HDTP to monitor space explorer’s wellness and location in the physical training space and virtual, Extended Reality (XR)-based training environments and track cognitive, emotional, and physiological fatigue during high-stress training tasks. The ability to move to “predictive monitoring” via AI/ML gives NASA team members and future space explorers on missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond the performance edge to successfully complete their mission.

Non-NASA applications include Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) solutions that can be licensed to the DoD community (Air Force, Navy, Marines) and other government organizations that require combining human performance and biometrics tracking with XR-based simulation and training needs. Other applications include engineering and medical/life science training and education, and home-based "Telehealth”.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 6) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.