If you’ve never watched astronauts tripping over rocks on the moon, you should take the time to do so.
Then consider the danger of a suit puncture occurring while an astronaut trips over rocks on the moon, and it becomes a bit less entertaining and considerably more concerning.
In an effort to help these clumsy walkers and others here on terra firma, researchers at MIT are developing special shoes that could be integrated into a navigation system to help the wearer avoid obstacles to mobility.
This is far from a new concept. Haptic feedback in shoes has been around for years , but the team at MIT has taken a different approach, going back to the drawing board to determine the best way to implement this sort of technology.
By researching the areas of the foot that are most sensitive to the feedback motors, Leia Stirling, an assistant professor at MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), whose group led the work, took the technology back to basics.
“A lot of students in my lab are looking at this question of how you map wearable sensor information to a visual display, or a tactile display, or an auditory display, in a way that can be understood by a nonexpert in sensor technologies,” said Stirling. “This initial pilot study allowed Alison [Gibson, a graduate student in AeroAstro and first author on the paper] to learn about how she could create a language for that mapping.”
The research shows that not only are some areas of the foot less receptive to the feedback, but also that individuals had difficulty attending to the stimuli or identifying differences in feedback intensity while distracted.
“Trying to provide people with more information about the environment, especially when not only vision but other sensory information—auditory as well as proprioception—is compromised, is a really good idea,” said Shirley Rietdyk, a professor of Health and Kinesiology at Purdue University who studies the neurology and biomechanics of falls.
“From my perspective, [this work could be useful] not only for astronauts but for firemen, who have well-documented issues interacting with their environment, and for people with compromised sensory systems, such as older adults and people with diseases and disorders.”
The work could directly apply to other navigation systems for the differently abled, such as MIT’s virtual “guide dog” 3D camera system . This integration and the variety of output methods would allow people at any ability level to navigate as easily as anyone else.
Now go back and watch that astronaut video again. It’s better knowing that the next humans to walk on the moon will be much safer, albeit less amusing to watch.