Torin Clark News

With Polaris Dawn’s launch, Colorado scientists will study vision changes in space

Jeff Zehnder — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 15:04:06 +0000

With Polaris Dawn’s launch, Colorado scientists will study vision changes in space Jeff Zehnder Mon, 09/16/2024 - 09:04

During SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn's multi-day high-altitude mission, which rocketed to space on Sept. 10, the crew will conduct health impact research to better understand spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS). Researchers from CU Boulder and the CU Anschutz Medical Campus are right there with them. Or at least their equipment and expertise will be.

The team is sending up specialized optical equipment to gather data from astronauts’ eyes and will analyze the results during and after the five-day mission.

The research is a collaboration between Allie Hayman, associate professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at CU Boulder, and Prem Subramanian, chief of neuro-ophthalmology at the CU School of Medicine.

Torin Clark, associate professor of aerospace engineering sciences at CU Boulder, is leading separate research from the ground for the Polaris Dawn mission about how astronauts experience motion sickness and other illusory sensations during space travel.

For some time, astronauts have noticed vision changes during long-duration space missions. Since 1998, NASA has sent astronauts to the International Space Station with “space anticipation glasses,” which have adjustable refraction settings to meet changing vision needs, similar to binoculars. In 2011, NASA began conducting MRI scans on astronauts following missions, which revealed potentially increased pressure in their brains as well as optic disc swelling, or papilledema, in more than half of the astronauts.

On Polaris Dawn, the researchers are sending up SENSIMED Triggerfish lenses, which are “smart” contact lenses to track eye pressure fluctuation and changes in cornea dimensions in glaucoma patients. CU Department of Ophthalmology Adjoint Professor Kaweh Mansouri, MD, contributed to the development of these lenses, which will monitor astronauts’ eyes during launch and as they transition to microgravity, a condition of apparent weightlessness. The lenses contain sensors that transmit data to an antenna and local storage device, enabling the researchers to collect and analyze data upon their return.

The team is also sending a device called the QuickSee, which will measure astronauts’ refractive error, when the shape of the eye changes and keeps light from focusing correctly on the retina.

Polaris Dawn crew members include Mission Commander Jared “Rook” Isaacman; Mission Pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet; Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Anna “Walker” Menon; and Mission Specialist Sarah “Cooper” Gillis, who graduated from CU Boulder in 2017 with a degree in aerospace engineering sciences.

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Space.com spotlights CU Boulder VR research

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 16:38:57 +0000

Space.com spotlights CU Boulder VR research Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/06/2024 - 09:38

Torin Clark is developing virtual reality systems to help astronauts cope with disorientation and motion sickness, a long underappreciated reality of space exploration.

An associate professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, Clark is an expert in human sensorimotor/vestibular function and adaptation.

Space.com is highlighting research in Clark's lab to create a virtual reality system to assist astronauts during splashdown, when survey's show a majority of astronauts and cosmonauts have gotten sick—a relatively minor condition that could become dangerous if nauseous crew members suddenly have to respond to a disaster.

Read the full article at Space.com...

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With space travel comes motion sickness. These engineers want to help

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 21:50:01 +0000

With space travel comes motion sickness. These engineers want to help Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/01/2024 - 14:50

In a corner room of the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building at CU Boulder, Torin Clark is about to go for a ride.

The associate professor straps himself into what looks like an intimidating dentist’s chair perched on metal scaffolding, which, in turn, rests on a circular base. The whole set up resembles a carnival attraction.

Which, in a way, it is.

Motion sickness and space
By the numbers

60%–80%

Percentage of space travelers who experience space motion sickness.

2–3 days

Typical length of a bout of space motion sickness.

86%

Percent of astronauts who reported vomitting as a symptom of their space motion sickness in a survey from the 1980s. Other common symptoms included anorexia (78%), headache (64%), stomach awareness (61%) and malaise (58%).

27%

Percent of Russian cosmonauts who experienced "readaption syndrome," similar to symptoms of motion sickness, upon their return to Earth.

Source: Heer & Paloski, 2006, "Autonomic Neuroscience"

“Torin, are you ready to start?” calls out graduate student Taylor Lonner from in front of a monitor displaying several views of Clark. “I’m going to go to 5 r.p.m. over two minutes.”

Clark gives a thumbs up and begins to spin—first slowly, then faster and faster. The chair whips in circles around the room, creating a centrifugal force that forces his body back into the headrest.

Once the machine slows down and Clark is back on solid ground, he seems a little wobbly but in otherwise good spirits.

“It basically feels like a gravitron,” he says, referring to the spinning, nausea-inducing rides that became a staple of county fairs in the 1980s.

The team from the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences is using this machine as one step in an experiment that seeks to recreate an experience that few people ever have: The shock of going from one gravity environment, like space, to another, like the surface of Earth. In particular, the group is tackling what happens when astronauts return home, landing in their spacecrafts in the middle of a choppy ocean.

Disorientation and motion sickness have long been an underappreciated reality of space exploration, Lonner said. Surveys suggest that a majority of astronauts and cosmonauts have gotten sick during water landings—a relatively minor condition that could become dangerous if nauseous crew members suddenly have to respond to a disaster.

Addressing such motion sickness will become increasingly important as more people travel into space, and stay there for long, Lonner said. In recent lab experiments, the team discovered that virtual reality goggles might help keep astronauts grounded when they splash down in the ocean. This technology can provide people with calming images of a landscape to gaze at, similar to watching the horizon from the deck of a boat.

The team presented its results this month at NASA’s annual Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshop in Galveston, Texas.

“We’re increasing this whole bubble of space exploration,” Lonner said. “But people aren’t going to want to do that if they’re just going to be miserable when they get to microgravity and when they return to Earth.”

Adrift at sea

For the aerospace engineer, the question is a personal one—she can’t so much as crack a book open during car rides without getting queasy. According to one hypothesis, motion sickness like hers arises from a sort of mismatch between the body and brain.

“When you’re in a moving environment, your body senses your surroundings, but your brain also holds an expectation for what you should be sensing based on your past experiences,” Lonner said. “When those two things disagree for an extended period of time, you get motion sick.”

Graduate student Taylor Lonner dons a virtual reality headset inside the Tilt-Translation Sled, a machine that, in experiments, can mimic the motion of ocean waves. (Credit: Taylor Lonner)

Engineers try out the cockpit of the Orion spacecraft, with a few porthole windows above their heads. (Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz)

In experiments, virtual reality scenes of a forest seemed to help reduce the motion sickness from a simulated water landing. (Credit: Clark lab)

Unfortunately for astronauts, space is full of those kinds of contradictions.

When humans first break free of Earth’s atmosphere, for example, their brains expect their bodies to experience a downward tug from gravity—conditions that don’t exist in space. As a result, roughly 60% to 80% of space travelers have experienced what scientists call “space motion sickness,” which can last for a few days or even longer. (Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov holds the dubious honor of being the first human to vomit in space when he lost his lunch inside the Vostok 2 spacecraft).

In separate research, Clark and his colleagues are exploring whether space explorers can reduce space motion sickness through simple exercises, such as careful tilts of the head.

But icky feelings may also emerge when astronauts come back to Earth. NASA is planning to send humans to the moon this decade aboard the Orion or Dragon spacecrafts. When Orion, in particular, returns to Earth, it will likely plop into the ocean somewhere off the coast of California. There, astronauts may bob up and down in the waves for as long as an hour while they wait for rescue.

It's not a pretty picture, Lonner said: “If you look at Orion and Dragon, there are only a few porthole windows that really aren’t sufficient for giving astronauts a fixed view of Earth.”

Walk in the forest

Back at CU Boulder, in a lab down the hall from the human centrifuge, Clark steps into a different machine.

The metal cube painted blue is about the size of a small bedroom. It previously resided at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and is so big that the team had to bring it into the building in pieces, then put it back together on site.

Once Clark secures himself to a chair inside and shuts the door, the massive device rumbles to life and begins to move, sliding along a track on the floor. It swishes in a straight line from one end of the room to the other for several minutes.

“You feel like you’re getting rocked back and forth,” Clark says.

In fact, it feels like being rocked back and forth by waves—the researchers programmed the sled’s motion by drawing on data from real buoys in the Pacific Ocean.

In one recent experiment, the team took a two-stage approach to simulating the motion sickness that comes from water landings: First, the group spun 30 human subjects for an hour in the centrifuge. That spinning mimics the disorientation astronauts experience when they suddenly transition from microgravity to the harshness of Earth’s gravity.

Next, the researchers rocked the subjects in the sled for as much as an hour. If that sounds like a recipe for nausea, Lonner said, it was.

But, she added, the team also gave each of the subjects a pair of virtual reality goggles to wear. Half of the subjects saw an image of a fixed white dot against a black background. But the other subjects received a much richer picture—a digital forest complete with a few cartoon humans for scale. Those forests also moved in tandem with the sled. When it slid or tilted, so did the trees and people.

“It’s like a virtual window,” Lonner said.

It also did the trick. Lonner explained that if subjects experienced moderate symptoms of motion sickness for longer than two minutes, they exited the experiment. Only a third of the people wearing goggles showing just the white dot lasted for the entire hour in the sled. In contrast, nearly 80% of subjects watching the forest survived the ordeal.

A window opens

The researchers are working to build on their results, exploring, for example, whether adding more information to the forest scene can help reduce nausea even more. But they are optimistic that virtual reality could give astronauts returning to Earth a little relief.

Lonner sees the project as a way of opening space exploration up to more people—including people like her who get nauseous on airplanes. She’s even used some of the lessons from her research in her own life.

“I realized that it’s worse when the window is closed, and I can’t see the clouds passing by,” Lonner said. “Now, I’ll always open the window to watch the clouds.”

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Researchers at CU Boulder advancing more trustworthy autonomous systems with U.S Air Force

Anonymous — Wed, 03 May 2023 15:25:08 +0000

Researchers at CU Boulder advancing more trustworthy autonomous systems with U.S Air Force Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/03/2023 - 09:25

Jeff Zehnder

Allie Anderson and Torin Clark at CU Boulder are conducting research into how humans and artificial intelligence systems work together.

The pair are part of a multi-university research team commissioned by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to study trust in autonomous systems. It is an important and complex problem.

“Trust is a dynamic human state with multiple dimensions - it’s different for each individual and the specific system you’re using. Trusting a self-driving car if you want to go to sleep in the backseat is different than trusting Alexa to tell you the weather,” said Anderson, an assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The work has broad applications across the technological spectrum, but the Air Force is particularly interested due to increasing integration of autonomy in military systems and the uncertainties faced by soldiers using them, said Anderson.

“There are many applications where autonomous systems may be used and – particularly with space-based applications – the human isn’t onsite with a satellite to have additional context, and you can’t always get all the data in real-time. We need to understand how users trust and view that type interaction with autonomy across a variety of situations,” Anderson said.

The initiative aims to build metrics and models for real time predictions of trust, with the goal of helping developers create better AI systems in the future, said Clark, an associate professor in Smead Aerospace.

“Space and military autonomy represent critically challenging environments and being able to estimate and predict human-operator trust will enable systems to intelligently alter their behaviors to complement their human teammates,” Clark said.

During the research, test subjects will be fitted with wearable sensors while they conduct tasks with AI systems. The sensors will collect physiological data on the body’s responses – things like heart rate and respiration – as well as how users physically interact with the systems. That includes where they are looking on a computer screen, the buttons they click, and how long they take to do an activity requested by the AI powered system.

“It’s exciting to work in this emerging field where there are important questions that need to be answered to move out of the laboratory and into operations,” Anderson said.

The three-year, $900,000 grant is being led overall by the University of California, Davis. CU Boulder’s work represents nearly $500,000 of the total award.

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Before the crew of Polaris Dawn heads to space, they came to campus

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 19:53:13 +0000

Before the crew of Polaris Dawn heads to space, they came to campus Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/18/2022 - 12:53

Four crew members of Polaris Dawn, including a CU Boulder engineering alumna, came to campus this week to discuss the science they will conduct throughout the mission in addition to answering questions and share stories with students. The visit comes nearly four months before the crew’s historic space mission is scheduled to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Polaris Dawn, the first of the Polaris Program’s three human spaceflight missions, will conduct 38 science and research experiments while in orbit. The research is designed to advance both human health on Earth and our understanding of human health during future long-duration spaceflights. Polaris Dawn crew members will also attempt the first-ever commercial spacewalk and attempt to reach the highest Earth orbit ever flown. They also will become the first crew to test Starlink laser-based communications in space, providing valuable data for future space communications systems necessary for human spaceflight missions to the moon, Mars and beyond.

Crew members include Mission Commander Jared “Rook” Isaacman; Mission Pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet; Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Anna “Walker” Menon; and Mission Specialist Sarah “Cooper” Gillis, who graduated from CU Boulder in 2017 with a degree in aerospace engineering sciences.

Panel of Polaris crew members and CU Boulder researchers talk at a campus event. Left to right: Torin Clark, Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, Jared Isaacman, Sarah Gillis and Allie Anderson during a campus event Monday. Photo by Casey A. Cass/CU Boulder.

“We all very much believe in a world where everyone is going to have an opportunity to go into space,” said Isaacman, who previously traveled to space as part of Inspiration4 mission in 2021.

In Boulder, the crew joined two CU Boulder researchers on a panel: Allie Anderson and Torin Clark, assistant professors of aerospace engineering sciences, who are leading five of the scientific experiments that will fly on Polaris Dawn.

The six space buffs talked about smart contact lenses, space motion sickness and why living on Mars will be like nothing humans have encountered before.

Anna Menon on what kind of training Polaris crew members undergo

We have done a lot of training focused on the technical details of the Dragon spacecraft. Then we've layered on top of that a lot of different environmental experiences to help us build team cohesion and also teach ourselves about our bodies’ responses to different environments. We went scuba diving to start experiencing the different changes in pressure environments that we will encounter when we do a spacewalk.

We climbed a nearly 20,000-foot mountain to get comfortable being uncomfortable together. We want to make sure that we can sit in a small can together for five days.

Sarah Gillis on people with disabilities and chronic illnesses flying to space

What we're trying to do is expand access to space for all. On Inspiration4, Hayley Arceneaux was the first person to fly with a prosthesis. For anyone who has disabilities, the space environment allows you to live in an entirely different way.

On our flight, we're going to be wearing glucose monitors for the full duration of the mission. About 10% of the U.S. population is diabetic, and that shouldn't disqualify you from flight as long as we can make sure that you can handle that well in space.

Torin Clark on studying how astronauts experience ‘space motion sickness’

A lot of what we're interested in is how our sensory systems and the brain interpret gravitational cues as you go from here on Earth, where there's gravity, to being in space where you're in a microgravity environment. We have one experiment that is looking at what sort of unexpected or illusory sensations the crew might experience when they go into microgravity.

We're also interested in the reverse of that: What are the sensations people face when they come back to Earth and transition from being adapted to microgravity to now experiencing the gravity-rich environment here on Earth?

Allie Anderson on exploring spaceflight associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS), a condition that can seriously affect the eyesight of astronauts

Essentially, the eye changes in space—it gets flattened from behind, and we have structural damage that you see to the eye itself, as well as to the nerve that goes from the brain to the eye.

To study that, we're flying two pieces of equipment in collaboration with our partners. We’re flying a device called the Quick See, which measures peoples’ refractive error, so what prescription somebody might need. We're also flying a device called the Triggerfish. It has a contact lens with an antenna in it, and it allows us to look at how the cornea, the front part of the eye, changes its shape, which tells us something about pressure in the eye.

Scott Poteet on what it’s like, as a former fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, to fly a vehicle that’s largely autonomous

Coming from fighters, I have a control issue. I want to control as much as I possibly can. But the direction we're going in the evolution of space travel, it's autonomous. It's the natural progression of most machines. I also think there is a lot of carry-over from flying fighters and other types of aircraft—the situational awareness, maintaining sensory management, understanding the information and how to interpret it, and communicating not only to your crew but everyone on the ground. I think these skillsets are still applicable and will be in the future.

Jared Isaacman on the prospect of living on Mars

What happens when a child is born in a reduced gravity environment? What does that set them up for? Today, not even a minor surgery has been done in space let alone a Cesarean section. If you live on Mars, Earth isn’t a blue marble like when you’re looking back from the moon. It’s a tiny, blue speck. You’re not two days or 24 hours from coming home from space. You’re six to nine months from coming home if something’s gone wrong.

I say all this because you’re all pursuing an academic path in aerospace. There are a million, real problems that people are going to have to put energy toward in a number of fields if having a sustainable population on another planet tis going to be even remotely possible.

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Seminar: Technologies and computational modeling tools for human vestibular performance in aerospace environments - Sept. 22

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 06:00:00 +0000

Seminar: Technologies and computational modeling tools for human vestibular performance in aerospace environments - Sept. 22 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/16/2022 - 00:00

Torin Clark
Assistant Professor, Smead Aerospace
Thursday, Sept. 22 | 3:00 P.M. | AERO 111

The first investigates the use of galvanic vestibular stimulation, which non-invasively, artificially stimulates the vestibular system, responsible for human orientation perception and balance. In a series of experimental investigations, we have explored using galvanic vestibular stimulation to enhance human perception and performance, particularly relevant for astronauts and pilots of high performance aircraft, who may face vestibular challenges.

Second, I will present extensions and applications we have made to a computational model for human spatial orientation perception.

Finally, I will touch on other ongoing research projects aiming to mitigate motion sickness for astronauts, evaluating displays and control modes for piloted lunar landing, and estimate human cognitive states for adaptive human-autonomy teaming.

His research focuses on the challenges that humans face during space exploration missions. Specifically, this includes astronaut biomedical issues, space human factors, human sensorimotor/vestibular function and adaptation, human-autonomy teaming, mathematical models of spatial orientation perception, and human-in-the-loop experiments.

Dr. Clark was previously a Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Fellow (2008-2013), the MIT Aero-Astro Boeing Fellow (2012-2013), a Summer Faculty Research Fellow for the Office of Naval Research, and was recently selected as the Smead Department Outstanding Junior Faculty (2022).

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CU Boulder researching ways to improve astronaut safety during future Moon landings

Anonymous — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 16:33:30 +0000

CU Boulder researching ways to improve astronaut safety during future Moon landings Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/28/2022 - 10:33

Jeff Zehnder

NASA conceptual image of human landing system and its crew on the lunar surface with Earth near the horizon.

Torin Clark has landed a major grant from NASA to investigate ways to help protect astronaut safety and performance during lunar landings for upcoming Artemis Moon missions.

An assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, Clark is leading a three-year, $800,000 project to study ways to improve how astronauts respond to gravitational cues when landing on the Moon or even Mars.

When humans travel into space, our bodies’ internal sensorimotor systems adapt to microgravity, but upon arrival on the Moon, they need to be able to rapidly readjust to the presence of gravity once again in order to safely maneuver and land.

“It is a pretty substantial concern that astronauts could misperceive their vehicle’s position and motion,” Clark said. “We’re trying to come up with countermeasures to mitigate that risk.”

Although Neil Armstrong and the other Apollo astronauts who landed on the Moon more than 50 years ago were able to overcome these issues, NASA wants to ensure disorientation is not a problem in the future.

“There is some evidence several of the landings were closer calls than we would like, and we also only landed there six times,” Clark said. “In the future, we don’t want go six for six. We want to go back to the Moon many, many times and make it increasingly safe.”

The research will include initial testing at CU Boulder using Clark’s Tilt-Translation Sled, which is a moveable chamber used to study how human test subjects respond to motion. Additional work will follow at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which has a large centrifuge that allows researchers to investigate effects of weightlessness and acceleration on humans.

“We have done computational modeling to predict when a human might be disoriented based on the motions they’re experiencing,” Clark said. “If we can predict it, and our model has been fairly successful so far, we can trigger an active countermeasure, like a heads-up display with orientation information to help astronauts keep the vehicle properly oriented.”

The project also includes Eric Vance, an associate professor of applied math at CU Boulder. His background is in using statistical analysis and data science to inform decision making.

“I helped design the experiment to test the effectiveness of the countermeasures, and I and my students will also help analyze the data and interpret their results, so Dr. Clark and the other team members can transform this evidence into action to improve space pilot performance and safety,” Vance said.

The project originally grew out of PhD dissertation research by Jordan Dixon, one of Clark’s students.

“It’s exciting to see this work come to fruition,” Clark said. “NASA’s objective is to send humans back to the Moon. We hope some of these countermeasures will be available for upcoming lunar landings.”

In addition to Clark, Vance, and Dixon, additional researchers involved with the project include Tristan Endsley and Sherrie Holder at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory.

Torin Clark has landed a major grant from NASA to investigate ways to help protect astronaut safety and performance during lunar landings for upcoming Artemis Moon missions.

An assistant professor in the...

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Return to research: Improving astronaut health for next gen space missions

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 22:59:58 +0000

Return to research: Improving astronaut health for next gen space missions Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/22/2020 - 16:59

Jeff Zehnder

Master's student Esther Putman in the tilt translation sled laboratory.

Life is returning to some semblance of normal for students in Assistant Professor Torin Clark’s laboratory on campus. A faculty member in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, his team’s research focuses on astronaut health on long-term space missions. When much of campus shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, most of their work came to a standstill – some of Clark’s equipment takes up entire rooms and is not conducive to “work from home.”

With new health policies and procedures in place at CU Boulder, research activities are resuming in modified form. Clark shared his experience with returning to research:

How is your lab restarting research after so much time away?

We weren’t doing much research in the Aerospace Building for about three months. We have a lot of really large equipment that is designed to simulate conditions in space that we can’t work on outside the lab – our Aerospace Research Simulator or Dream Chaser capsule, the tilt translation sled, the human centrifuge.

Our work focuses on astronauts and aerospace applications, but it has impacts for health here on Earth, particularly connected to falls in the elderly, which are a leading cause of hospitalizations and even death. It’s related to your inner ear and vestibular system, which are critical to balance.

Getting back into the building even in a limited way is really positive. Even a small amount of access enables a lot. We can get in for a few hours to run experiments and then do data analysis and software from home.

What are the biggest challenges as you restart? How are you addressing them?

The delays are tough, particularly for shorter-duration projects. We have research with Lockheed Martin that will be delivered in November that will be a challenge timing-wise. For longer-term projects we've been able to pivot and delay some hands-on work to emphasize computation and modeling for the time being.

What precautions are you taking to stay safe?

We're coordinating schedules so there's not too many people. There are helpful guidelines from campus and the aerospace department. We have very low occupancy and are maintaining physical distancing, always wearing masks, and sanitizing work spaces before and after use. In addition, there are general restrictions on building access and a daily health history questionnaire.

As a team we had to get everyone on the same page and make sure everyone understood the procedures. We've had teleconferences and email exchanges to discuss logistics. I have about 15 students total including undergraduate researchers, but only a few of them are in the building per day.

What changes, postponements or issues are you facing in your research?

We rely on human subjects for some of our work and have just recently received approval to start that again. Thankfully the research that we're doing, subjects don't have to take off masks and can maintain physical distance. But in some cases the types of human subject experiments we perform require multiple operators in addition to the subject, which is constrained by our room capacity restrictions.

Have you noticed any benefits to your time away from campus?

In normal times there can be a desire to jump in and run experiments as quickly as possible for data collection because you're excited and want to see the results, but we're being much more thorough and thoughtful. It is helping us develop stronger models and theories to do experiments later, which should lead to better research long-term.

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Seminar: Astronaut sensorimotor impairment and artificial gravity - Sept. 4

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 06:00:00 +0000

Seminar: Astronaut sensorimotor impairment and artificial gravity - Sept. 4 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/28/2019 - 00:00

Torin Clark
Assistant Professor, Smead Aerospace
Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019 | AERO 111 | 2:30 P.M.

Abstract: Modern crewed aerospace vehicles operate in challenging environments, leading to complex and often highly-automated vehicle system designs. My research focuses on understanding the capabilities and limitations of humans in these environments and developing and evaluating countermeasures to improvement performance and safety. Here, I will focus on two research projects. The first investigates the feasibility and efficacy of short-radius centrifugation to create artificial gravity for astronauts during long-duration missions.
A series of ground-based, human subject experiments are presented that use our Human Eccentric Rotator Device (HERD). Second, I will present on the development and validation of a novel ground-based analog for astronaut sensorimotor and neurovestibular impairment post-flight. The wheelchair head immobilization paradigm (WHIP) will be introduced and results from human subject testing presented. Finally, I will touch on other ongoing research projects using our crewed planetary landing simulator, computational modeling of human-vehicle control, and space habitat design.

Bio: Torin K. Clark is an Assistant Professor in the Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences department and an investigator in the Bioastronautics Laboratory. Prior to joining CU in 2016, he completed his PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT as part of the Man Vehicle Laboratory (now the Human Systems Laboratory). He was a National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) First Award Fellow (postdoctoral fellow) at Harvard Medical School in the Jenks Vestibular Physiology Laboratory. His research focuses on the challenges that humans face during space exploration missions. Specifically, this includes astronaut biomedical issues, space human factors, human sensorimotor/vestibular function and adaptation, interaction of human-autonomous and human-robotic systems, mathematical models of spatial orientation perception, and human-in-the-loop experiments. Dr. Clark was previously a Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Fellow (2008-2013), the MIT Aero-Astro Boeing Fellow (2012-2013), and recently a Summer Faculty Research Fellow for the Office of Naval Research (2018).

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Artificial gravity breaks free from science fiction

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Jul 2019 01:11:54 +0000

Artificial gravity breaks free from science fiction Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/02/2019 - 19:11

Daniel Strain

Artificial gravity has long been the stuff of science fiction. Picture the wheel-shaped ships from films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Martian, imaginary craft that generate their own gravity by spinning around in space.

Now, a team from CU Boulder is working to make those out-there technologies a reality.

The researchers, led by aerospace engineer Torin Clark, can’t mimic those Hollywood creations—yet. But they are imagining new ways to design revolving systems that might fit within a room of future space stations and even moon bases. Astronauts could crawl into these rooms for just a few hours a day to get their daily doses of gravity. Think spa treatments, but for the effects of weightlessness.

The group hopes that its work will one day help keep astronauts healthy as they venture into space, allowing humans to travel farther from Earth than ever before and stay away longer.

But first, Clark’s team will need to solve a problem that has plagued proponents of artificial gravity for years: motion sickness.

“Astronauts experience bone loss, muscle loss, cardiovascular deconditioning and more in space. Today, there are a series of piecemeal countermeasures to overcome these issues,” said Clark, an assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. “But artificial gravity is great because it can overcome all of them at once.”

Read the full story and watch the video at CU Boulder Today.

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