Measuring astronaut performance on the ISS: advanced kinematic and kinetic instrumentation

This paper presents the design of an advanced kinematic and kinetic measurement system for the International Space Station (ISS). Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), NASA, Politecnico di Milano University, and the Italian Space Agency are currently developing jointly an integrated system capable of precisely measuring the forces and moments the astronauts induce and their postures and movements. Kinetic measurements will be performed with special crew restraint and mobility aids instrumented with strain gages. The compact electronics component of the sensors provides real-time feedback of the load level applied. The kinematic measurements of astronaut motion will be accomplished with ELITE-S2, a general purpose opto-electronic motion analysis system proposed for the ISS by the Italian Space Agency (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, ASI) with the support of the French Space Agency (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, CNES). This versatile motion capture system provides three–dimensional (3-D) kinematics data in real-time using video-image processing for detecting multiple passive markers.