TELEOP: Impact of Confinement and Isolation on Crew Performances during Long-Duration Missions

• Main Authors: Martin Estrana, Veronica, Vagnone, Federica, Roy, Raphaëlle N., Lizy-Destrez, Stéphanie
• Other Authors: Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace - ISAE-SUPAERO (FRANCE)
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Autre; Confinement; Isolation; Motivation; Performance; Concordia Station; Sirius; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://oatao.univ-toulouse.fr/25995/; https://oatao.univ-toulouse.fr/25995/1/MartinEstrana_25995.pdf

In the last decades, most space agencies have been focusing on manned flight missions. Therefore, to ensure the success of long-term space missions, new factors like confinement and isolation need to be studied. The TELEOP project investigates these effects on crew’s performance during Human-Robot Interactions (HRI), such as cargo docking operations or remote control of a rover for surface exploration of the Moon or Mars. Confinement implies living in narrow spaces with limited privacy and isolation having very little contact with people from the outside; those conditions mostly characterize human space missions. In order to study its impact, several analog mission campaigns ave been run within the TELEOP project, such as: MDRS-189 (Mars Desert Research Station – Utah desert) and ARES III (in Lunares Research Base, Poland). The subsequent mission will soon be carried out in the Institute of Bio-Medical Problems of Moscow (IBMP) in Russia, during the SIRIUS-19 campaign (Scientific International Research In a Unique terrestrial Station), with the collaboration of NASA, and the next MDRS-206 expedition. In the following years, the aim is to run the experiment in more realistic and confined environments: the ISS and the Concordia station in Antarctica. In order to assess confinement and isolation and their impact on teleoperation performance, an innovative protocol has been designed. This enables us to have a complete overview on factors linked to teleoperation performance (execution time and accuracy), such as participants’ personality traits, affective state and physiological state. Teleoperation performance was evaluated by the guidance of a rover, a task that was performed by each crewmember several times per mission. During the task, physiological activity was recorded using an electrocardiogram (ECG), whereas assessment of both psychological and personality aspects were performed using questionnaires. The latter two intended to assess the mood, motivation, confinement feeling and subjective effort. As a result of the analysis of the data gathered during both the MDRS-189 and ARES III missions, important results were uncovered. The main finding demonstrated a significant correlation between motivation and positive feelings or personality and confinement. Moreover, the outcomes showed a strict link of confinement and teleoperation performance. Thanks to this unique approach in studying the impact of confinement in such realistic environments, TELEOP allows us to learn more about this unexplored field and consequently to better prepare for future missions to Mars and to the Moon.