NASA ARC Director’s Colloquium by Dr. Bernard Adelstein
Subject: Director’s Colloquium by Dr. Bernard Adelstein, July 7
From: Centerwide Announcement
Date: Wednesday, July 1, 2009
TO: Resident Staff
FROM: Stephanie Langhoff, Chief Scientist
SUBJECT: Director’s Colloquium by Dr. Bernard Adelstein, July 7
On Tuesday, July 7, at 2 p.m. in the Main Auditorium (N201), Dr. Bernard (Dov) Adelstein will present the fifth colloquium in the 2009 Director’s Colloquium Summer Series entitled, “Human Vibration Studies for NASA’s Constellation Program.” This talk will be followed by a reception in the lobby of Building 200. All Ames employees and especially our summer students are cordially invited. This is an opportunity how human research carried out at Ames on the 20-G centrifuge is contributing to NASA’s exploration mission. The Director’s Colloquium 2009 Summer Series poster is available at http://insideames.arc.nasa.gov/upload/directors_colloquium_summer09.ppdf
Abstract: NASA’s Constellation Program (CxP) encompasses a new family of crew and launch vehicles to return humans to the moon, to eventually explore more remote destinations, and to service the International Space Station after the Shuttle is retired. Analyses indicate the solid-rocket stage of the crew launch vehicle, Ares-I, will produce a pressure fluctuation (termed “thrust oscillation”) that could deliver vibration to crew at levels far in excess of those seen in any prior NASA program. Consequently, thrust oscillation was raised to CxP’s top risk and an Agency-wide effort was initiated to develop mitigation strategies. A key unanswered question for this effort was how far vibration levels should be lowered in order for crew to perform critical mission functions.
In the summer of 2008, an Ames team began a series of human-in-the-loop studies to provide explicit quantitative guidelines that would relate input seat vibration to decrements in crew performance for modern display technologies and concepts of operation. In addition to program background and historical context, this presentation will describe the sequence of five studies completed during the past year in our lab and on the Ames 20-G Centrifuge involving participants recruited from JSC’s Astronaut Office and from the Ames community. Results from these studies are helping CxP set thrust oscillation limits and inform the selection of mitigation options.
Biography: Bernard (Dov) Adelstein has been with the Human Systems Integration Division and its predecessors at the NASA Ames Research Center since 1991. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (MIT, 1981, 1989) for research on manual control interfaces for people impaired by involuntary tremor (i.e., internally generated limb vibration). At NASA, his research has centered on the assessment of coupled human-system performance for multi-sensory displays, with a focus on understanding human perception of time delays, inter-modal (haptic, visual, auditory) asynchronies, and on developing technologies to mitigate their impact on human performance. Dr. Adelstein was principle investigator for a series of human vibration studies conducted at Ames in 2008 and 2009 and co-principle investigator on a Detailed Test Objective project to measure Shuttle seat vibration during the launches of STS-119, -125, and -128. He serves the Constellation Program’s Human System Integration Group (HSIG) as the subject matter expert on human vibration and was the human factors expert on the Ares-I Thrust Oscillation Focus Team.
