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Current progress in VR technologies offers the possibility to adopt some of the astronaut training facilities to virtual reality. In particular the Soyuz Simulator which is developed at the Institute of Space Systems in Stuttgart is chosen to be recreated as VR application.
It is the long-term goal to build a competitive and robust space
flight sim...
Citations
... This means that the orbital mechanics and spacecraft systems are run by the Orbiter Space Flight Simulator developed by Martin Schweiger [13] [14]. Since the Orbiter Simulator does not support virtual reality, additional software was developed at the IRS as part of several Aerospace Engineering students' bachelor's and master's theses [15], [16], [17], [18]. This software was implemented using the Unity Game Engine [19], which then serves as a visual representation of the calculations made in the Orbiter Simulator. ...
... Hand tracking at the IRS (S. Ruber[16] ...
Over the last decade, the Institute of Space Systems (IRS) in Stuttgart, Germany, has developed and deployed a series of space docking simulators, mainly based on the Soyuz-TMA and PTK-Orel spacecraft, which have been used for research of piloting performance during experiments in Antarctica and Moscow, Russia. Now, a new concept of a spacecraft docking simulator has been developed using emergent technologies such as virtual reality (VR), eye-tracking and hand-tracking. This paper describes the latest development of this VR simulator concept and its first field deployment for the SIRIUS-21 analogue mission at the facilities of the IMBP in Moscow. The simulator allows for the acquisition of flight telemetry, pilot behaviour, and biometric parameters during flight scenarios involving the ISS and the Lunar Gateway. Its deployment in analogue missions and isolated environments provides tools to enhance the understanding of human performance and the assessment of potential risks in long duration space missions. The use of eye-tracking and hand-tracking, for instance, enables the study of the pilot's interaction with spacecraft instrumentation and provides an insight into mental focus and compliance with flight safety procedures. Finally, a critical analysis of the simulator and its development perspectives for potential use in real astronaut training are given.
... Moreover, a customised interactive cockpit has been designed (see Fig. 3) in order to allow the user to control the spacecraft. S. Ruber [18] explains extensively how the development of the cockpit and display representations has been ...
... A standalone version of the simulator is being considered by only using Unity and modelling a new physics environment. Other improvements are considered in the future, which would allow to feature more realistic training scenarios, as explained by S. Ruber [18]: ...
... Interactive cockpit inside the VR environment, which features user interaction by using both joysticks and virtual hands[18]. ...
The use of new informatic technologies for the interaction between humans and machines has opened up a new spectrum of application opportunities, especially in the field of vision science. Virtual Reality (VR) visualization as an enhanced simulation environment offers the possibility to improve, flexibilise and accelerate the learning process of humans. For this purpose, a new space flight simulator has been developed in the Institute of Space Systems in the University of Stuttgart, as a successor of the Soyuz Simulator. By combining the use of VR and realistic computational models, this new simulator aims to investigate how this technology can be applied to the training of astronauts. This paper describes which are the main technical challenges in order to develop a device that has to offer both graphical and physical realism, considering the need to perform at real-time and, nonetheless, perform mathematically complex calculations related to spacecraft dynamics, orbital perturbations, and more importantly, offer full interaction with the pilot. A case-study based on an interactive cockpit environment for the future Russian spacecraft "Federatsiya" is presented. A mission scenario based on the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G) is realized. The features of this simulation are thoroughly analysed, from cockpit interaction to new graphical training tools proposed for enhancing the pilot's performance.
