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Touching the Moon: Leveraging Passive Haptics, Embodiment and Presence for Operational Assessments in Virtual Reality

Florian Dufresne, Tommy Nilsson, Geoffrey Gorisse, Enrico Guerra, André Zenner, Olivier Christmann, Leonie Bensch, Nikolai Anton Callus, Aidan Cowley

TL;DR

This study investigates whether passive haptic interfaces can improve the fidelity of VR-based ConOps assessments for lunar missions. By reconstructing the Apollo 12 ALSEP deployment in VR and contrasting a physical mockup with a virtual one, read alongside astronaut gloves, the authors quantify embodiment, presence, usability, and workload across 24 spaceflight experts. Results show that wearing authentic gloves increases body ownership and presence, and that combining gloves with a physical mockup yields higher realness, aligning with Apollo crew feedback to support VR as a valid early-stage ConOps tool. The findings suggest passive haptics can enhance VR fidelity for mission concept evaluations, while also highlighting limitations and directions for future work to further close the gap with real-world operations.

Abstract

Space agencies are in the process of drawing up carefully thought-out Concepts of Operations (ConOps) for future human missions on the Moon. These are typically assessed and validated through costly and logistically demanding analogue field studies. While interactive simulations in Virtual Reality (VR) offer a comparatively cost-effective alternative, they have faced criticism for lacking the fidelity of real-world deployments. This paper explores the applicability of passive haptic interfaces in bridging the gap between simulated and real-world ConOps assessments. Leveraging passive haptic props (equipment mockup and astronaut gloves), we virtually recreated the Apollo 12 mission procedure and assessed it with experienced astronauts and other space experts. Quantitative and qualitative findings indicate that haptics increased presence and embodiment, thus improving perceived simulation fidelity and validity of user reflections. We conclude by discussing the potential role of passive haptic modalities in facilitating early-stage ConOps assessments for human endeavours on the Moon and beyond.

Touching the Moon: Leveraging Passive Haptics, Embodiment and Presence for Operational Assessments in Virtual Reality

TL;DR

This study investigates whether passive haptic interfaces can improve the fidelity of VR-based ConOps assessments for lunar missions. By reconstructing the Apollo 12 ALSEP deployment in VR and contrasting a physical mockup with a virtual one, read alongside astronaut gloves, the authors quantify embodiment, presence, usability, and workload across 24 spaceflight experts. Results show that wearing authentic gloves increases body ownership and presence, and that combining gloves with a physical mockup yields higher realness, aligning with Apollo crew feedback to support VR as a valid early-stage ConOps tool. The findings suggest passive haptics can enhance VR fidelity for mission concept evaluations, while also highlighting limitations and directions for future work to further close the gap with real-world operations.

Abstract

Space agencies are in the process of drawing up carefully thought-out Concepts of Operations (ConOps) for future human missions on the Moon. These are typically assessed and validated through costly and logistically demanding analogue field studies. While interactive simulations in Virtual Reality (VR) offer a comparatively cost-effective alternative, they have faced criticism for lacking the fidelity of real-world deployments. This paper explores the applicability of passive haptic interfaces in bridging the gap between simulated and real-world ConOps assessments. Leveraging passive haptic props (equipment mockup and astronaut gloves), we virtually recreated the Apollo 12 mission procedure and assessed it with experienced astronauts and other space experts. Quantitative and qualitative findings indicate that haptics increased presence and embodiment, thus improving perceived simulation fidelity and validity of user reflections. We conclude by discussing the potential role of passive haptic modalities in facilitating early-stage ConOps assessments for human endeavours on the Moon and beyond.
Paper Structure (33 sections, 4 figures, 4 tables)

This paper contains 33 sections, 4 figures, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related work
  3. Real-World ConOps Assessments
  4. Using Virtual Reality in Place of Analogues
  5. Validity of Using Virtual Reality
  6. Experiment
  7. The Apollo 12 Case Study
  8. Virtual Simulation
  9. Apparatus
  10. Experimental Design
  11. Participants
  12. Procedure and Measurements
  13. Pre-experiment procedure
  14. Experiment procedure and tasks
  15. Post-experiment procedure
  16. ...and 18 more sections

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: (a) Back and (b) front views of the gloves with our controller. (c) The controller nicely fits inside the mockup's carry mast when grasped, completing its shape to a tube. (d) High-fidelity mockup of the carry barbell as used in real-world analogue field studies (credit: NASA). (e) Low-fidelity mockup of the barbell used in the VR field study.
  • Figure 2: Outline of the hand controller features
  • Figure 3: Descriptive plots
  • Figure 4: Barcharts for dependant variables whose results show significant differences.