The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has teamed up with San Francisco’s Osterhout Design Group in order to create an augmented-reality system for astronauts which will allow mission instructions to be uploaded directly to their lenses, enhancing their ability to communicate with NASA’s engineering teams.
While astronauts currently rely on printed instruction manuals, strategic partnerships manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, Sean Carter, was quoted by the SF Gate in a report as having said that they would have feedback from the “astronaut and crew” come fall, if the crew even lets it take that long, and that the programs would commence after which point.
By the fall, we will have astronaut and crew feedback […] It’s our goal to approach the programs shortly thereafter. I don’t know that the crew will let us wait that long.
The administration believes the augmented reality glasses could prove viable replacements for the present system of old-fashioned paper checklists which astronauts turn to in instances of emergency.
While the glasses will, in essence, be similar to Google Glass, AOL news reports that training astronauts at NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) lab decided that the Google Glass screen was too small and that it was awkward to quickly scroll through things.
Reports indicated that the Osterhout Design Group’s glasses are scheduled to be tested at NEEMO later this year. The group’s current models include HD displays and cameras, Wi-Fi, GPS, headphones and positional sensors.
In regards to the augmented reality technology for NASA’s human space explorers, Bloomberg quoted Sean Carter, an official at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, as having said:
For us, this is huge today, and it gets even bigger tomorrow. The further we go away from earth, the more we need this.
In other recent NASA coverage here on Immortal News, the administration successfully launched an Atlas 5 rocket carrying 4 probes to study magnetic reconnection as part of a $1.1 billion research program.
Are you surprised NASA astronauts training at NEEMO found Google Glass to be inadequate?
