Engineering Seniors Developing ‘Smart Watch’ Technology For NASA Astronauts

By: Anna Herod

Six electrical engineering students are working hard to leave their mark on the NASA space station.

The students are creating wearable technology in the senior engineering design program after the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (S.T.E.M.) disciplines at Texas State received $15 million from NASA. The technology will help keep astronauts on task and monitor their health. It will provide a communication structure and a warning system in case of emergency.

Tyler Lyssy, Mathew Mullen and Kyle Paul, electrical engineering seniors, are developing an interface called PixelSense that will intertwine with the operation of the wearable device.

Both projects are scheduled to be completed in May and will be presented at senior design day.

The wearable technology is a “computer you wear on your arm,” said Chad Hoffman, electrical engineering senior and member of the “Smart Watch” wearable technology project with Garet Curry and Derek Fancher, electrical engineering seniors.

“Right now on the space station, they don’t have a timing system,” Hoffman said. “Timing on the space station is worth millions, and they want to make every minute count. So we needed something universal to let the astronauts know that their time is running low or that it’s time for them to move to the next project.”

PixelSense will operate from a Samsung Galaxy surface computer in space with infrared cameras allowing up to 52 astronauts to work at once. Emergency alerts will be sent to the computer through the interface as well as to the wearable technology.

The astronauts’ devices will display alerts and offer safety procedures that correspond emergencies such as ammonia leaks, Hoffman said.

“They have ammonia on the space station to cool all of the electronics,” Hoffman said. “It’s in a vacuum, so you’re talking extreme cold. So if they get an ammonia leak on the station, it will kill everybody.”

PixelSense is equipped with object recognition capabilities that compliment the health monitoring system in the wearable technology, Lyssy said.

“There will be tags with barcodes on the food packages, and the astronauts will scan them on the computer, and the PixelSense database will catalogue the food to that specific astronaut’s food log,” Lyssy said.

The watches will catalogue blood pressure, diet, body temperature and oxygen levels in addition to keeping records of astronauts’ food intake.

“If someone were to have a heart attack on the space station, the devices would let all the astronauts and correspondents back in Houston know what’s going on,” Hoffman said.

Localization of control systems is another key feature of the technology NASA wants, said William Stapleton, assistant senior design professor. The students will put all of the controls for equipment on efficient wearable devices.

The two projects have been in the works with NASA for quite some time, he said.

“Now the students have a chance to work with something very interesting, and they’re doing a great job and making a lot of progress,” Stapleton said.

The projects are completely worth the strenuous hours, Lyssy said.

“We’re getting to work on technology that is already out there and make it better and make it our own,” Lyssy said. “We’re getting to build on the knowledge that we’ve learned at Texas State and gain a lot of experience.”

Anna Herod is a news reporter for the University Star where this story originally published, and is reprinted here through a news partnership | @CorridorNews