Deakin-Coventry Cotutelle - AI-supported virtual reality for well-being in space

Isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments present various physical and psychological challenges. Advances in technology and propulsion systems mean that planned deep space missions, to Mars and beyond, will take place sometime in the future. Although human beings have evolved over millions of years to survive and even thrive in their natural habitat, space presents an inhospitable and extreme environment that will interfere with the crew’s natural adaptation and acclimatisation processes.

As it stands, there is a gap in knowledge on the physiological and psychological effects of missions such as this, however, based on past ISS and ICE research we can conclude that deep space missions will present unique stressors and challenges which inevitably increase the risk of crew members developing psychotic, depressive or anxiety disorders. Furthermore, maintaining the psychological welfare of the crew will be imperative on such missions to mitigate the risk of negative consequences on both physical and cognitive performance. Although space health has advanced recently, there is a gap in research on usable monitoring devices and effective countermeasures that can support the crew’s mental health on deep space missions. With this in mind, we have prototyped a multifunctional platform that measures, monitors and supports the mental health of the crew. The platform combines virtual reality with wearable sensors, featuring simple interfaces that allow for the collection of and interaction with data. In this platform, we integrate the astronomical heritage scenes with music and meditation as Virtual reality content, to promote relaxation, positive emotions, and strengthen a sense of belonging.

To develop this platform and explore the heritage experiences, we will run a data collection hub at the museums in Australia and the UK to measure the emotional states of visitors participating in the virtual heritage experience using wearable sensors such as EEG, ECG, eye gaze tracking, galvanic skin response. The data will reveal the type and degree of emotional impact the content has on users and help identify valuable heritage content to use in immersive environments. The results will support efforts to develop a new physiological signal-based emotion recognition system to measure the emotional states of the people who participate in virtual heritage experiences.

Aims and objectives

The overarching aim of this research project is to develop an AI-based platform to measure the mental status of the museum visitors (level of stress and basic emotions), to investigate whether heritage experiences have a positive effect on emotional states or not and to select the experiences that decrease the level of stress and increase positive emotions.

Expected outcome

The project’s outcomes will include:

• A new AI-based platform to measure the emotional states using heritage experiences and find the best and most suitable experiences that can reduce negative emotional states like sadness, anger and stress.
• A collection of heritage experiences data to be used for astronauts.

This project is a pilot study but will provide initial results for potential scaling up (with the industry partner) to be applied for the astronaut's space simulation.

Research Questions

In this study, we will address the below research questions through collaborative trans-disciplinary partnerships in both countries:

• RQ1: How can machine learning and wearable sensors support measuring emotions of the users and monitor their well-being?

In this project we will propose an AI-based model to measure the emotional state of museum visitors using wearable sensors and select the best. This study will target the publications in the computer science, machine learning and human-computer interaction areas.