Interface[s] Montréal

Immersion and Virtual Reality

Yves Gonthier

Canadian Space Agency

A Real-Time Simulator for 3D Mental Image Reconstruction On-Board the International Space Station

View the presentation [In French]

A Real-Time Simulator for 3D Mental Image Reconstruction On-Board the International Space Station
The operations of manned and unmanned space vehicles and their associated supporting docking and robotics systems require significant crew training both on ground and on orbit. A number of psychological and physiological factors are known to affect the crew on-board performance. Therefore, skills degrade over time and the frequency, depth of proficiency and refresher training need to be studied. Currently a new experiment is designed in order to study the 3D mental image reconstruction for tasks involving the operation of all robotic components of the Mobile Servicing System of the International Space Station. The long-term goal of this research project is to gather data to study skill degradation and recovery of psychomotor and cognitive skills. This data will be analyzed to help define metrics that could be used to assess the level of readiness of an operator to perform complex tasks.

To study performance degradation and skill recovery, a highly efficient simulator is required in order to ensure on-orbit real time simulation and fast feedback to the operator. In this project, the challenge is the real-time simulation of Canadarm2 and Dextre while performing graphics rendering of the worksite environment using just a single computer, in particular a P4 1.8Ghz IBM ThinkPad. The simulator relies on the modeling technology from SGDL to generate highly realistic images. For the graphics rendering of the models, the SGDL models are transformed into an approximate polygonal representation. This minimizes the computational load on the CPU and optimizes the rendering rate by using graphics card hardware acceleration. At the same time, a collision detection algorithm is applied to the exact SGDL model to monitor any collision event.

It is planned that the experiment will be launched on the space station in April 2006.

The SMP simulator runs on a single IBM A31P ThinkPad and provides the same three camera views to the operator as with the real system, and a graphical user interface to operate the robotic systems.

Yves Gonthier is a Robotics Engineer working at the Agence spatiale canadienne in Longœuil, Quebec, Canada. He holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and is currently a part-time Ph.D. candidate at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada, working in collaboration with Prof. John McPhee and Dr. Jean-Claude Piedboeuf of the Canadian Space Agency.