aaion has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
The core of the concept was to create a software solution that is flexible and can run on different devices in very various environments. The existing solutions on the market cover only the main problems of common people, but they miss to provide widen and flexible solutions for rare problems. The whole software is deeply customizable. Each programming object works with default values that can be changed by user or administrator from server level.
The importance of our project is its flexibility. However our proof of concept covers one of the most common issues only the concept of the code is much much deeper.
The structure of our concept is independent from any programming language to provide a really flexible solution. We made an abstracted scheme that can be represented in any programming language. Aaion contains 6 different categories:
• Day
• Circadian rhythm
• Need
• Factor
• Activity
• Loss
Day
However the base unit of time in SI metric system is second, people organize their own schedule by day and by hours. Day means the period of time during which the Earth makes a complete rotation around its axis. Besides this definition, people handle day as a time that equals with 24 hours. The approximation is good for the most of use-cases. We handle two different day types:
• “normal” day
• custom day
Day or normal day means the Earth-day that is 24 hours long and begins 00:00 (12 a.m.) and lasts 24:00 (12 p.m.). Custom day represents a day that can be shorter or longer than 24 hours. It occurs for example when we talk about other planets or environments under the surface or in space.
A day usually begins after midnight. The following details can be changed in our day construction:
• when the day begins
• the length of day
• which timezone is used
Circadian rhythm
Circadian rhythm is the natural wake-sleep cycle. The human circadian cycle on Earth is nearly 24 hours. The base unit of the circadian cycle is the circadian unit.
The following details can be changed in our circadian rhythm construction:
• when the cycle begins
• the length of cycle
Need
Need means the lack of something requisite in a specified time period. Need is the smallest unit that can be satisfied during one activity. A need has default values, but it can be changed. Need can handle functions to manage for example the depletion-level. The basic needs are:
• sleep
• work
• exercise
• any type of nutrition
• light
• noise
• temperature
• medication
The following details can be changed in our need construction:
• when the need occurs
• the value of need
• specified function
• type of need
It is important, that activity which can satisfy a special need is handled in the details of activity not in the details of need.
Factor
Factor is the actual level of any kind of need. There are 2 different types of factor based on the possibility of intervention to modify their actual or future level:
• personal factor
• environmental factor
Personal factors can be changed or modified by the user such as sleep, caffeine, nutrition. It is adjustable or measurable. Environmental factors can be set by the environment, we can only measure or calculate its actual level.
The following details can be changed in our factor construction:
• actual level of factor
Activity
Activity means any kind of action that is able to satisfy a need for example eating, sleeping, taking medication.
The following details can be changed in our activity construction:
• which need can be satisfied by that specific activity
• level of satisfaction, connected to a specific need
• when the activity begins
• the length of activity
Loss
Loss means the mathematical difference between the optimal, circadian-based schedule and the actual schedule. Loss punishes any kind of difference between the actual and the optimal routine. The punishment rate in the examples was constant (1), but it can be chosen freely. It is advised to use a function that calculates a non-linear loss, since some activities should be punished more based on how much time has passed. Loss can be calculated based on any needs or factors such as nutrition, light.
Attributions of user
Attributions are special settings for users that are able to help for customizing the software to get the better user experience. An attribute can be rule based or custom. Rule based attribute means that setting a new value from a list results in a chain of automatic changes. For example, when a person changes the type of bedtime from late person to morning person, the system will recalculate the sleeping parameters such as the beginning and end of sleep cycle. We plan to manage the following attributions at the moment:
Technology and globalization get new challenges day by day for the human nerve system. We work at companies where colleagues live in other time zones on the other side of the Earth. Traveling across time zones is cheap. COVID-19 pandemic results in a new form of cooperation between people. Online meetings change flying that means there is no time for acclimatization to a new time zone. A lot of people live determined by two or more time zones. In home offices people jump from a state of sleep into work within seconds. These kinds of changes result in bad mood, fatigue, health issues and poor performance since there is a great challenge to fit the changes to the circadian rhythm. We categorize the problems into two classes. The first category connects to a daily life when the problems occur regularly and concern a lot of people, and the problems. The second part of problems affect a special and small group of people as astronauts, miners and underground workers. As it seems obvious, the slicing method is based on circadian rhythm. First group usually lives a normal daily routine, but the second group works and lives usually without a normal day-night cycle or a cycle that is longer or shorter, than 24 hours.
Our inspiration was to demonstrate time shifting is not just for travelers and astronauts but for almost everyone. As we showed in the previous sections of this form we are devoted to solving the less common cases as well.
The ground of our approach is to imagine this challenge from both sides at the same time. It means we made a top-down and a bottom-up planning as well. Therefore we constructed abstract objects and a much more simple proof concept too.
At the beginning we developed the deep core components of our system in Java programming language to maximize the effect of the object oriented programming strategy. Later on we made the most common use case in Python to demonstrate the core concept. We made some experiments with API functionality to provide easy-to-use proof of concept as a web page. Finally we developed our proof of concept in JavaScript. By digging a bit deeper in that code you can see some interesting problems about using programming languages and time. The limits of their functionality is really surprising.
Our proof of concept can be found here:
Some additional code is available in the GitHub link of our project.
We like to create and use open source solutions. That’s why we used open source softwares during hackathons for additional tasks such as writing a book with LibreOffice and creating the demonstrational pictures with Inkscape. Our logo was created with Inkscape and GIMP.
We made a picture to demonstrate how we used data from NASA. In the references section the source was tagged by the field where we used the actual data.
We think a well drawn structure says more than thousands of words and is much faster to understand and imagine anyway.

Source 01 [for limitations, use-cases and main frame of project; proof of concept were made by ideas based on this source]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH2hL5Ua_m8
Source 02 [features; advises; concept and algorithm of the shifting of time zones based on the table about shifts of Orbit 1]:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/astronauts_improve_sleep
Source 03 [understanding of the problem; advises]:
Source 04 [understanding of the problem]:
NOTE: This source were removed from the resources section of Sleep Shift Scheduling Tool in NASA Space Apps Challenge 2020 during the hackathon
https://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/Experiment/exper/1234
Source 05 [concept of needs (nutrition and time)]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGR3FiEkBwA
Source 06 [understanding the problem of exercise, concept of needs (exercise and time)]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ikouWcXhd0
Source 07 [time of space travel and jet lag; concept of needs (exercise, nutrition)]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouDKD9G9jOE
Source 08 [concept of needs (nutrition)]:
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/143163main_Space.Food.and.Nutrition.pdf
Source 09 [concept of needs (nutrition)]:
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/human-adaptation-to-spaceflight-the-role-of-nutrition.pdf
Source 10 [shifting circadian-cycle; formations of time shifting; future: aaion could be feeded by this data via API]:
https://techport.nasa.gov/view/23211
Source 11 [concept and algorithm of the shifting of time zones; negative effect of fatigue]:
https://techport.nasa.gov/view/23207
Source 12 [concept of needs (sleep)]:
https://techport.nasa.gov/view/23234
Source 13 [future only: aaion could be feeded by this data via API to measure factors better and set attributions of the user more precesily]:
https://techport.nasa.gov/view/96038
Source 14: [future only: aaion could be feeded by this data via API and aaion could take data to SmartSleep]:
https://techport.nasa.gov/view/96044
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Source [inspiration only for the children living within ourselves; It is a great books for kids]:
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/space_nutrition_book.pdf
The following sources contains promising data, and they seem to be a good start for further data collecting, but we cannot investigate precisely due to time limitation of NASA Space Apps Challenge 2020 hackathon:
https://humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov/Risks/risk.aspx?i=100
https://humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov/Evidence/
https://humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov/Evidence/reports/EvidenceBook.pdf