Virtual Control Room for Real Satellites

Open Human-Computer Interaction Computer Science Bachelor Master Project Thesis No Affiliation

Background

We were going to invest a really big amount of money to create our futuristic control room to control and monitor our next satellite and other spacecrafts coming in the future, including the moon mission from PTS (https://mission-to-the-moon.com/) for which we are writing the software. Then we decided to instead do the same with a virtual room and virtual reality glasses. We have people in the control room who were involved in the construction of the spacecraft. They have diverse expertise, e.g. computer scientist, attitude control experts, navigation, propulsion, guidance, mechanical, mechanical, electrical, thermal, energy engineers, communication experts, ground control etc. The telemetry of a satellite includes thousands of parameters. Each engineer monitors the parameter he/she knows and understand. This is about 100 to 200 parameter per person. A person carefully observes about 10 to 20 parameter at a time and then looks to another group. Therefore, parameter are grouped by monitors.

We do not need many monitors. Each engineer can have virtual reality glasses and just look at other directions to see other data, including graphical 3D representations of attitude, navigation, camera view, etc.

In addition to the above mentioned, this call is also open for the following modules: Aerospace Information Technology Bachelor Thesis, Spacemaster and Satec Master Thesis.

Tasks

• Design a nice futuristic control room
• Distribute telemetry data to different virtual working places
• Show the corresponding data according to position and view direction of each engineer in graphical and alphanumerical form.

Prerequisites

• Familiarity with implementing VR applications
• Familiarity with Head-Mounted-Displays (preferably Oculus)
• Good programming skills

Contact Persons at the University Würzburg