Sleep Shift Scheduling Tool
ASTRA - Astronaut Scheduling Tool for Rest and Activity
Summary
Astronauts consistently lack sleep both during flight, during launch and during pre-launch activities, despite having a nominal amount of sleep scheduled for them. Research has given valuable information on sleep quality, but a clear interface to act upon this is lacking. ASTRA provides a solution to this, leading to a system which automatically records basic environmental parameters as well as physiological features of astronauts. Ground support correlates these parameters and gives live changes to astronauts' schedules, rather than the rigid current schedules. Together with novel ideas such as natural alternatives to sleeping pills, we believe ASTRA will improve astronauts' lives.
How We Addressed This Challenge
The objective of our project is to evaluate passively acquired input, such as sleeping conditions, schedule and training activities, and actively logged on input, such as emotional state and felt energy level of the user, to determine the best possible sleeping schedule. To achieve this aim, the Astronaut Scheduling Tool for Rest & Activity (ASTRA) was developed. As a side goal, ASTRA shall be the least intrusive possible, because its hypothesized user is already following a strict schedule.
ASTRA will include and relate three different interfaces: a smartwatch, a phone and a browser tool. Two different users have been hypothesized: one is the astronaut or worker for whom the schedule is developed, the other is the scientist or planner that is also interested in having more insight about the gathered data and conclusion. The two users could coincide, but the distinction was made assuming that the main user will not be interested in the background information, but only on the resulting schedule that he or she should apply.
ASTRA will include and relate three different interfaces: a smartwatch, a phone and a browser tool. Two different users have been hypothesized: one is the crew member for whom the schedule is developed, the other is the scientist or planner that is also interested in having more insight about the gathered data and conclusion. Since the two user groups have different needs, we created separate interfaces.
- The smartwatch will be used to gather data passively, such as the user's heartbeat, temperature, and movements, and actively by taking verbal input about the user’s mood. The smartwatch will also convey messages to the users, notifying about sleep activity and give the user useful advice (e.g. "put on your sunglasses", "switch to brighter lights", etc.).
- The phone will be used by the crew member or worker to input personal feedback or preferences. On the phone, the user will also have an overview of the future schedule, previous data and explanations behind the current schedule. This helps the user understand the provided schedule and hopefully help them better commit to the routines.
- The web app will be used to visualize the overall trends of astronauts' sleep and sleeping conditions, nutrition and training regime for the planner or scientist.
As it was already mentioned, to gather the relevant date, the crew members should input as little as possible - the rest of the data should be gathered through the smartwatch and other connected devices. This is illustrated in the following pictures.
How We Developed This Project
General development
Sleep is something interesting in the fact that we all dedicate one thirds of our lives on it. Yet, many people experience issues with fatigue, insomnia or a general feeling of not being well-rested. These phenomena are particularly noticeable for people with unusual schedules, like night-shift workers, business travelers and astronauts. With our team being very interested and experienced with space affairs, we have notices that astronauts are almost like super-beings, always busy with tasks. And most importantly, structurally lacking sleep. During pre-launch, launch and post-launch activities, astronauts on average have two to three hours less sleep than scheduled for, which is already not much. It is a miracle that they can sustain this for several months, though signs of fatigue are easily showing, both during flight and after flight. As we thought there are many things that could be improved regarding this, we decided to tackle this challenge.
With a background of four aerospace engineering students, one software developer and one industrial design student, we form a perfect background to both think about the most suitable user interface, develop the front- and back-end dashboard and monitoring tools and do intensive theoretical research with space agency data. We developed the scheduling tool with Python, an adaptable dashboard which imports data automatically and we have found and used relevant space agency datasets. Yet, we would have liked to use more datasets, as a very limited number of them was available.
All documentation of the project can be found in the Technical Report: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AB9R-tdeM6e8V-zuN8WwI32lD6Fwk7_8/view?usp=sharing
Crew Member Individual Activity Tracker
The individual activity tracker will feature a number of widgets that will showcase all the available data for each crew member, such as registered sleep time and quality, physical exercise and performances, etc.
Each crew member can easily interact with the Tracker to have better understanding and insight in the data. It can also input changes in the schedule that the app will automatically take into account when developing the sleeping schedule.
Crew Overview Dashboard
The overview dashboard offers monitoring crew and scientists key insights into the sleep quality and physical fitness of each crew member. The dashboard consists of a frontend that governs the graphical aspects and the dynamic components that visualise the data and a backend dedicated to data processing and data collection.
We developed our dashboard using cross-platform and open-source technologies. Our frontend was built with responsive standards in mind, so it could offer the same ample perspective about crew members on mobile devices as well as desktop systems.
The frontend side offers a real time image of both external factors such as lighting, temperature and humidity as well as individual data for each crew member, from sleep parameters to physical activities, moreover data regarding the calorie intake it is also recorded and showcased withing our dashboard.
The pannel header of the dashboard has tabs for each category of parameters. From external factors that can affect the sleep quality to baseline values that are tailored to each crew member.
Data Visualization Elements
The main charts that complement the overview dashboard deal with sleep and physical activity. The sleep quality is directly reflected using a correlation between heart rate and sleep activity. Our data visualisation component allows us to analyze months of sleep data
Physical parameters resulting from daily activities such as exercise and spacewalks can result in a visible change. We correlate data coming from nutrition with body mass and the average sleep time to showcase
We developed our backend to process each data stream and correlate the given parameters using our algorithms. The data is provided to the frontend components such as charts and graphs and allows for time series filtering and dataset selection
The crew overview offers key insights into several parameters for each individual member.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
We have been lucky that this particular challenge offers a plethora of different research and data on the quality of life of astronauts. The following pieces of research and data have significantly helped the development of our project:
Nutrition in spaceflight - An extensive document which shows almost all research done by NASA about the influence of certain nutrients on the physical and mental well-being of astronauts. It has helped us understand what the critical health and nutrition issues in space are, and most importantly what already has been done to counteract it.
Astronauts sleep deficiency - A research on hundreds of astronaut activities, which was crucial to understand what astronauts reported to be the most critical reasons for sleep disturbance and to have clear facts showing the sleep deficiency of astronauts. The fact that this information comes both from astronaut experience and independent monitoring gave us inspiration for ASTRA.
Astronauts sleep problems - A research done by Chinese scientists which also includes data obtained from Chinese space missions and astronauts, which is uncommon. The fact that their findings were similar to NASA's and other agencies strongly supports the need for ASTRA. Their reports on sleep problem causes and possible countermeasures has helped us be creative with our solution, as their recommendations included some unusual measures.
Melatonin production - An insightful research on the effects of an alternative way of sleep scheduling before launch. Important is that their focus is on melatonin and cortisol levels, two hormones which play a key role in sleep. We have found out that monitoring of this is achievable and shows a quantitative way of understanding adaptation to a sleep schedule. Also, it has inspired us to look at alternative, more natural ways of influencing cortisol and melatonin levels in the blood, by using foods which increase either melatonin or cortisol levels quickly without side effects.
NASA wrist-device for sleep monitoring Phase I & NASA wrist-device for sleep monitoring Phase II - NASA study which helped us understand what NASA has been doing on the field of astronaut monitoring and what the limitations in their approach are - namely loss of comfort for astronauts and the lack of flexibility of the schedules of the astronauts. Yet, their monitored data matches with the data we would like to monitor with ASTRA, which shows the feasibility of our project.
We are very happy that NASA has responded on some of our request for data availability. Much research on sleep quality can be found online, but it takes expertise to see whether this research is applicable to space research and astronaut well-being as well. Specialised studies by NASA and partner space agencies have done exactly this, and some of this research has actually been performed on astronauts or even in space. This data is much more valuable for understanding how to improve sleep schedules and sleep quality of astronauts than non-space research. We focused mostly on these datasets to understand correlations between relevant input parameters about an astronaut's physical and mental status and environmental parameters.
Project Demo
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NpBrNCSaEjdn5Wa5OVSSJhMsEX95nEV2/view?usp=sharing