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Maintaining orientation in an environment with non-Earth gravity (1 g) is critical for an astronaut's operational performance. Such environments present a number of complexities for balance and motion. For example, when an astronaut tilts due to ascending or descending an inclined plane on the moon, the gravity vector will be tilted correctly, but the magnitude will be different from on earth. If this results in a mis-perceived tilt, then that may lead to postural and perceptual errors, such as mis-perceiving the orientation of oneself or the ground plane and corresponding errors in task judgment.
Although extensive safety measures and safe working procedures have been applied to improve and secure metal working machines, they still put their operators at risk. These risks might often result from manipulation errors, in particular if safety measures are ignored. In this contribution, a safety evaluation strategy has been developed that applies VR and mixed reality technologies to investigate the usability of working machines. An automatically controlled machine tool was simulated and connected to a real input panel, usually employed in industrial settings. However, Human-Machine Interfaces are sometimes built in a way that does not prevent the operator from cognitive misinterpretations which in turn might result in mistakes. To take that into account, a control program for a lathe was altered by hiding a typical programming mistake in the lines of code. Subjects were given the task to evaluate the program in single step mode and to report abnormalities while running the simulated lathe, comparable to new control program checks at real machines. An evaluation of the study demonstrated that even experienced metal workers accepted the simulation and reacted as if the given task was real. Behavioural data of considered subjects showed comparable profiles and most subjects rated the VR- based approach as a reasonable means for investigating work safety problems.
Might the gravity levels found on other planets and on the moon be sufficient to provide an adequate perception of upright for astronauts? Can the amount of gravity required be predicted from the physiological threshold for linear acceleration? The perception of upright is determined not only by gravity but also visual information when available and assumptions about the orientation of the body. Here, we used a human centrifuge to simulate gravity levels from zero to earth gravity along the long-axis of the body and measured observers' perception of upright using the Oriented Character Recognition Test (OCHART) with and without visual cues arranged to indicate a direction of gravity that differed from the body's long axis. This procedure allowed us to assess the relative contribution of the added gravity in determining the perceptual upright. Control experiments off the centrifuge allowed us to measure the relative contributions of normal gravity, vision, and body orientation for each participant. We found that the influence of 1 g in determining the perceptual upright did not depend on whether the acceleration was created by lying on the centrifuge or by normal gravity. The 50% threshold for centrifuge-simulated gravity's ability to influence the perceptual upright was at around 0.15 g, close to the level of moon gravity but much higher than the threshold for detecting linear acceleration along the long axis of the body. This observation may partially explain the instability of moonwalkers but is good news for future missions to Mars.
