A Virtual Social Support System for Long-Duration Space Exploration Missions

This technology could be applied to all current and future NASA missions. While it is being developed for application to long duration space flight operations, the techniques are amenable to application in shorter duration flight operations as well, such as related to the International Space Station and Space Shuttle. This is particularly true with respect to behavioral and psychological health (whereas crew cohesiveness is anticipated to be less of an issue as duration decreases). This behavioral modeling technology could also be applied to NASA's Aerospace activities. For example, it could be used to measure stress on air traffic controllers. Adaptation to commercial airlines, in which the standardized procedures and repetitive nature of their execution within the close confines of an aircraft facilitates the modeling and establishment of norms for the behavior for individual crew.

The military has teams of individuals working in high stress environments over long durations. Examples include submarine crews, aircraft carriers, embedded special operations forces and pilots flying unmanned air vehicles for hours on end. We expect this same technology to transfer to military applications, since even a lag of one minute makes most real time interactions impossible, and this technique would allow are more interactive communication where none was possible before (ex: on a submarine). A variety of commercial activities also have similar characteristics to NASA missions, and the ABCAT software has commercial potential here. As mentioned, air traffic controllers work in high-stress environment where small mistakes can be costly. Likewise, teams of operators control nuclear power plants, petrochemical plants, oil refineries, etc. They often perform standard operating procedures and need to be monitored closely for degraded performance. Even in situations in which lives or property are not at risk, monitoring and detecting problems with individual and team performance is useful for managers interested in achieving peak performance. More »