Intelligent Devices/Equipment/Instruments (IDEI) for Enabling Crew Health and Performance on Mars

The Moon to Mars eXploration Systems and Habitation (M2M X-Hab) 2024 Academic Innovation Challenge features a project titled “Intelligent Devices/Equipment/Instruments (IDEI) for Enabling Crew Health and Performance on Mars”. The project calls for the development of prototype IDEIs “that could be used for implementing integrated system health management for Crew Health and Performance (CHP) required for crew living on Mars for extended periods of time”. Thus, the deliverable for the project is not only a prototype exercise device, but also an ontology that provides insight into the best ways to exercise on Mars.

To that end, we on the BLiSS team, supported by advisors from industry and academia, set out to ideate an exercise ontology and demonstrate its effectiveness through a functional prototype. To achieve the stakeholders’ requests, the device must operate semi-autonomously, must be an analog for an extant exercise device on Earth, and must provide quantitative information about the exercise and the device’s own state of health. Here, we define “semi-autonomous” as referring to the fact that while the system should be as autonomous as possible, there are some processes that the system cannot fulfill on its own. These include, but are not limited to, user identification, physical exercise reconfiguration, and wearable sensor placement.