News, NASA: MIT Scientists are developing  new space boots that can prevent astronauts or visually impaired people from tripping by using vibrations to guide the wearer around and over obstacles. Falls in space can jeopardise astronauts’ missions and even take their lives.

If an astronaut trips over moon rocks, getting to his or her feet in a bulky, pressurised spacesuit can consume time and precious oxygen reserves. Falls also increase the risk that the suit will be punctured.

Since most falls happen because spacesuits limit astronauts’ ability to both see and feel the terrain around them, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed the boot with built-in sensors and tiny “haptic” motors to guide the wearer around or over obstacles.

“A lot of students in my lab are looking at this question of how you map wearable-sensor information to a visual display, or a tactile display, or an auditory display, in a way that can be understood by a non-expert in sensor technologies,” said Leia Stirling from MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science.

“This initial pilot study allowed Alison Gibson, a graduate student in AeroAstro and first author on the paper to learn about how she could create a language for that mapping,” Stirling added.

The team presented a prototype of the boot recently at the International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction in Toronto, Canada.

“This work could be useful not only for astronauts but for firemen, who have well-documented issues interacting with their environment, and for people with compromised sensory systems, such as older adults and people with disease and disorders,” said Shirley Rietdyk, at Purdue University.