NASA Internship
This past fall term I completed an internship with NASA at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The internship was 4 months long from August to December. I worked in a VR lab developing an immersive training simulation for the Atermis III mission. I learned a lot about software development and got to work with expensive and high-end technology systems. Overall, the internship was an extremely rewarding experience.
Projects
During my internship, I worked on two major projects. The first, was the ‘Forward Access Study for the IHab Gateway Module’ and the second was the ‘Collaborative Training Simulation’. The Forward Access study was for a paying client engineering group interested in studying different methods for processing payloads. While the Collaborative Training Simulation was a general long term project seeking to provide NASA with a common set of technologies capable of immersive training for technicians.
Forward Access Study
At the start of my internship an outside engineering group, Advance Planning, commissioned our lab to conduct a humans factors study. They were interested in studying different methods for processing payloads that will go on future Artemis missions. A major engineering challenge at NASA is that operation procedures often need to be developed before the actual hardware is available or even onsite. This can lead to costly unforeseen challenges. The clients were mainly concerned with technicians ability to perform certain operations when given different tools and machinery.
I had numerous responsibilities in planning and conducting the study. I, along with the other intern, were primarily responsible for running the motion capture system on the day of the study. The Vicon motion capture volume, provides accurate full-body motion tracking capabilities, which are crucial for conducting human factors analysis during the study. Additionally, we developed the physical mock-ups that provided the technicians with tactile objects to interact with during the study. We utilized rapid prototyping and 3D printing to build the mock-ups. The simulation ran in Unreal Engine 4.27, a real-time game engine. We were given 3D CAD models by the clients and were responsible for converting those to real-time gaming assets, which have strict authoring requirements. We did a lot of asset authoring in Blender 3D creating needed UV and texture maps.
Me in the full-body motion capture suit preforming a test for the Forward Access Study.
Collaborative Training Simulation
Our main task through out the term was developing new features for the Collaborative Training Simulation program. This a software program, developed in Unreal Engine 5, that allows multiple users, across NASA centers, to practice operations in a realistic interactive environment. We developed two new features controllerless object interaction and full-body tracking. Controllerless object interaction allows users to pick up virtual objects without hand controllers. The full-body tracking system utilized Vive hardware, to implement a more cost effective method for approximate full-body tracking.
I am most proud of the full-body tracking system. It was a fairly complicated system to implement. The main challenge was developing the skeletal rig. It required transforming positional data into character animation poses. Development took about 2 months and required learning numerous Unreal Engine tools in the process. At the end of the internship we tested the full-body tracking system with with Marshall Space Flight Center in a networked session. It was extremely rewarding demonstrating the system I built to the other engineering group.
Conclusion
One of the best parts of my internship experience were the people I met. Everyone at NASA was extremely open to talking about their work and generous with their time. I learned so much not only about software, but also a general appreciation for the skill and dedication that goes into all the engineering disciplines. The people around me motivated and inspired me. Everyday felt like a small adventure in which I got solve challenging problems.
Intern group picture on our last day
