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USF Engineering Students Part of National Team to Participate NASA SUITS 2021 Design Challenge

Febuary 17, 2021

Team Navi has been selected to participate in the NASA SUITS 2021 design challenge for their design titled "Navi Augmented Reality Lunar Exploration Heads-up Display System," . Four of the nine students in this national team are from USF: Computer Science and Engineering student Soumya Abraham and Electrical Engineering students Christian Coris, Evan Thomas, and Jesse Moody. This proposal presents a visual display system called Navi for consideration as part of NASA's Spacesuit User Interface Technologies for Students (SUITS) Design Challenge. The team plans to develop an augmented reality heads-up display using a Microsoft HoloLens 2 to assist lunar astronauts with extra-vehicular activities (EVAs). CSE faculty Dr. Jing Wang will guide USF team members in handling funds and grant proposal processes.

Navi utilizes a Microsoft HoloLens 2 augmented reality (AR) head-mounted display (HMD) to unobtrusively present information to Artemis astronauts as they complete lunar extravehicular activities (EVAs) to increase efficiency and decrease cognitive load. Though Navi has potential for myriad features and expansions, this round of development establishes the proof of concept and thus focuses on navigation, EVA system state, and geology sampling. The system includes a set of sub-modules based not only on the challenge requirements, but also on observations drawn from the Apollo lunar surface journals; these modules include a time manager, map and navigation system, suit tracker (e.g., telemetry, vitals, and consumables), science sampling workspace, enhanced vision system, and warning system.