Engineers design spacesuit tools, biomedical sensors

Several Kansas State University engineering students are working with a model spacesuit to explore how wearable medical sensors can be used in future space missions to keep astronauts healthy. 

Credit: Kansas State University

Kansas State University researchers are improving astronauts' outerwear for outer space.

The collaborative team—which includes electrical and computer engineering professors and more than a dozen students—envisions a future spacesuit that could monitor astronauts' health and use body heat to power electronics.

By working with a model spacesuit, the engineers are exploring how wearable medical sensors can be used in future space missions to keep astronauts healthy.

William Kuhn

The project is supported by a three-year, $750,000 NASA grant and involves the College of Engineering's electrical and computer engineering department, the Electronic Design Laboratory and the College of Human Ecology, including the kinesiology department and the apparel, textiles and interior design department.

William Kuhn, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Steven Warren, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, are two key faculty members working on the engineering portion.

Steven Warren

"This project supports a number of undergraduate and graduate students in doing systems-level engineering research and making them the technologists of the future," Kuhn said.

The project involves five parts, with several students involved in each part:

Kansas State University engineers are developing new energy harvesting methods that use body heat and a spacesuit's cooling garment to power radios and other electronics inside the spacesuit. 

Credit: Kansas State University

• Developing and testing biosensors that can monitor astronauts' vital data, such as breathing rate or muscle activity.
• Creating a specialized wireless network so that spacesuit biosensors can communicate with each other and with a space station.
• Using energy harvesting technology to power radios and biosensors while an astronaut is in a spacesuit.
• Building hardware prototypes for biosensors and energy harvesting electronics.
• Producing spinoff technologies, such as new radio technologies and devices that apply to home care.

"This project is a good example of how when you do something in space, everything needs to be rethought—human elements and nonhuman elements of the system," Warren said.

"We have a lot to learn about human physiology and what happens to a person as they physically change in a reduced-gravity environment."