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Completed TRL 3 (started at 3, targeting 4)
Accurate assessments of suit mobility and posture are essential for supporting EVA suit and task design. However, commercial 3-D motion capture systems are cost prohibitive and often not feasible in certain test conditions, such as simulated lunar exploration in outdoor terrain. The goal of this work is to develop a technical framework to estimate the 3-D posture of a spacesuit from the conventional photographs or videos recorded by digital cameras. A prototype software will be developed to identify the suit posture, which maximally matches with the photograph using iterative parameter optimization. The pre-assessed mobility constraints and kinematic patterns of the suit will define the limits and ranges of the posture variables. The framework will be validated by comparing the reconstructed geometry to a 3-D scan or simulated rendering of a suit in EVA poses.
A spacesuit imposes constraints to the wearer's mobility, resulting in unique kinematic patterns of the suit and increased musculoskeletal loading to the human body. Understanding spacesuit mobility helps to mitigate injury risks by providing the quantitative metrics to optimize the EVA tasks and hardware, and improve task performance. The technical framework from this work can enable the estimation of the 3-D posture of a spacesuit during simulated EVA tasks using conventional digital cameras, without complex sensors or hardware. This tool, at least within the scope of the proposed work, may not function as a complete alternative to a commercial motion capture given the lack of exhaustive validation across different suit types and visibility conditions. However, it is expected to provide a fast and usable estimation of suit postures. The system will provide EVA stakeholders with a fast and inexpensive tool to quantify suit kinematic patterns in different test conditions and task types, which can help to optimize suit, hardware, and task designs.
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