Photo By Petty Officer 2nd Class Connor Burns | Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Matthew Crosetti, a native of Jackson, Mississippi, uses a...... read more read more
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Since the dawn of time, humanity has looked up at the heavens and wondered “what if?” One day in the not-so-far future humanity will make its return to the moon. They will make their first footsteps on Mars where they will look back at Earth and wonder “what now?” The roundtrip to Mars is expected to take around a year and a half. In this time, astronauts will have plenty to keep themselves busy, but they will have little to remind them of their home on Earth.
Through augmented reality, Texas A&M University graduate student Renee Abbott has been able to deliver some of the comforts of home. Abbott is working side-by-side with the university, NASA and the United States Navy to make that idea a reality.
Abbott began with those already on a journey away from home—Sailors and Marines assigned to USS Boxer (LHD 4) and the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. In January and April, the ship’s medical department hosted a simulated reality experience for those on board willing to take a step into a virtual journey.
The project is aimed at improving astronaut behavioral health and performance on long-duration missions, providing a countermeasure to stresses and feelings such as loneliness that these individuals may feel on their long and taxing journey.
Abbott, with the help of many skilled civilian and military counterparts, seeks to expand upon and refine the project with help from the Boxer crew and other ships, as there are many similarities between Astronauts and Sailors: both spend long amounts of time in confined spaces working under a sometimes draining and rigorous schedule.
“Short-term, the goal is to develop, test and validate our relaxing, nature-inspired multisensory virtual reality (VR) environments,” said Abbott. “[Boxer] will provide a base that we can expand upon in the future. We want to know: What aspects of an individual’s mood and cognitive performance are affected? Does the addition of sensory stimuli not typically included in VR significantly enhance the benefits of our countermeasure?”
The version of the project aboard Boxer had Sailors and Marines don a virtual reality headset, which transported them into a variety of VR environments while a piece of technology emitted scents to add to the simulation. Fragrances such as pine for a woods environment or rose pedal for a botanical garden were introduced.
Aerospace Experimental Psychologist Lt. Cmdr. Todd Seech, assigned to Commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, was in charge of administering the virtual reality experience, as well as a series of performance based tests for the project to a volunteer pool of roughly 30 Sailors and Marines aboard Boxer.
“Our findings from this group of individuals here aboard Boxer gave us some really promising information,” Seech said. “It’s really interesting to see how people are handling the experience and seeing what direction this thing is heading towards.”
Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Marcus Jackson, assigned to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit embarked aboard Boxer, was one of 30 Sailors and Marines that took part in the project.
“Overall, the VR experience was good,” said Jackson. “The best part of it was the smells. Smells bring up memories from your past and they give realism to the environment. It really gives you a break from ship life.”
Long-term, the goal is to expand upon the current countermeasure and refine it. While the footprint is relatively small right now and could work decently well in most terrestrial settings, the team would need to downsize some aspects of the hardware if it were ever to fly [in a spacecraft].
“It would be amazing if this type of countermeasure was adopted for any upcoming space missions such as the Artemis (moon) or Mars campaigns,” said Abbot. “This could also be applied to other similarly isolated/stressed populations such as military personnel, nursing home residents, etc.”
Abbott was not alone in developing the project. It took a counsel of several advisors to develop, plan and execute the project with participating partners.
“[The project] was a combination of my idea and my PhD advisor’s idea, Dr. Diaz-Artiles, Assistant Professor in Aerospace engineering and director of the Bioastronautics and Human Performance Lab from Texas A&M,” Abbott said. “She had the basics of the idea, and I expanded upon it and added specifics, bringing it to its current form.”
The Boxer test pool is one of many Abbott and her team have analyzed. The results so far have proved to be positive, and the team looks towards the future with hope.
“I feel pretty good,” Abbott said. “Our smaller scale lab experiment at A&M had promising results and I am excited to analyze the data from Boxer.”
Boxer is a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship homeported in San Diego. Commissioned February 11, 1995, Boxer is the sixth ship to bear the name. Boxer’s crew is made up of approximately 1,200 officers and enlisted personnel and can accommodate up to 1,800 Marines.
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| Date Taken: | 04.05.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 04.26.2024 18:59 |
| Story ID: | 468754 |
| Location: | NAVAL BASE SAN DIEGO, CA, US |
| Hometown: | COLLEGE STATION, TX, US |
| Web Views: | 118 |
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