Astronaut virtual reality training lifts off
Boeing astronaut Chris Ferguson is familiar with the left seat of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, where he will sit just inches from NASA astronauts Nicole Mann in the middle and Michael Fincke on the right as they launch into space. It’s a setup he’s become intimately familiar with after countless hours in a Houston simulator.
But now, thanks to a new partnership with a Helsinki, Finland-based virtual reality company, Ferguson can feel like he’s sitting next to his colleagues while training from his office in Florida near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
That company, Varjo, announced Thursday that its virtual reality headsets will be used to train astronauts for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. It’s a high-profile order for the nearly 4-year-old company and a particularly exciting customer for co-founder and CEO Niko Eiden, who studied aeronautical engineering before pivoting his career to technology.
Astronauts, he said, have “one of the most extreme professions out there, and you have to be prepared for the unexpected.”
The Varjo VR-2 virtual reality headset will allow astronauts to be remote but still interact with Boeing’s simulator. Ferguson, for instance, could wear the headset in Florida while Mann or Fincke are in the simulator in Houston. When Ferguson pushes a button in virtual reality, that same button is activated in the simulator.
“It will be just like when he’s sitting in the simulator,” said Boeing spokesman Steven Siceloff.
Boeing is working to ferry astronauts to the International Space
Station through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, the same program that recently partnered with SpaceX to launch astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the space station.
An uncrewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule is expected in the fall (this is a repeated test as its first uncrewed flight in December had a software problem that prevented it from docking with the International Space Station) and then Boeing will launch Ferguson, Mann and Fincke.
Astronauts keep busy schedules — going to Russia to train on the country’s International Space Station components or working in Florida where the Starliner program is based. Boeing sought a headset that could help continue training while the astronauts are not physically in Houston. It has purchased two Varjo headsets for $4,995 apiece. The aerospace company has also contributed its own money to develop software that connects the headsets to the training simulator, but it declined to disclose those costs.
Should Boeing fly non-professional astronauts in the future, the headsets could help familiarize these customers with Starliner before they come to Houston for simulator training.
The headsets should still help astronauts develop muscle memory as they have to reach out to interact with the control panel, said Connie Miller, a software engineer in Boeing’s IT department who supports the company’s space program.
The main difference is that astronauts wearing the headset will “push” the control panel’s buttons using a handheld controller. They won’t get the same tactile feedback.
“It certainly won’t replace physical training,” Miller said, “but it will help augment it.”
She added that Varjo solved a particularly challenging problem that had been plaguing Boeing: reading text on the control panel when in virtual reality. When using Boeing’s software on other headsets, users had to lean toward the control panel to read the text. This put them too close, and they couldn’t see their hands to know if they were pushing the correct buttons.
“The Varjo headset really was a game changer in this,” Miller said. “We just needed a headset with the resolution to let us see things in an optimal position.”
Having high enough resolution to read text in virtual reality is challenging because the pixels are spread around a 360-degree view — and that lowers the resolution compared with a TV, where the pixels are more condensed in one area.
Eiden said the Varjo VR-2 headset solved this problem by concentrating pixels in the center field of vision, providing a sharp picture quality in the area the user is focusing on. As the user turns his or her head, the sharp center moves to follow the line of the user’s gaze.
Varjo has roughly 130 employees. Its technology is designed for industrial use rather than gaming. At a nuclear power plant in Finland, the headset is being used to train workers on the plant’s control room.
Volvo Cars is using the Varjo XR-1 mixed reality headset that allows the user to see both his or her actual surroundings and virtual reality. Volvo used this to test a new vehicle design, shown in the headset, while driving an older vehicle on an actual road. The person wearing the headset could see the new vehicle’s interior. In addition, the vehicle’s new safety figures could be triggered by virtual items such as a fake moose crossing the street — which caused the actual vehicle to slow down.
Varjo’s next space endeavor will be adjusting its headsets to work in microgravity. Boeing would like to take a headset into space so astronauts could practice their reentry before returning home.
But this will create one more challenge. Right now, the headset’s motion sensor is calibrated against the acceleration of gravity at Earth’s surface (9.81 meters per second squared, the speed at which something would free fall if it was only affected by gravity).
If the Varjo headset was taken to space as is, it would make users feel like they were hurtling along.
“It would be very hard to stay still in space,” Eiden said. “It would think that it’s continuously accelerating in one direction.”
But he’ll fix that before the Varjo headset is launched into space.