Low-gravity simulator design offers new avenues for space research and mission training

As humanity continues its exploration of the universe, the low-gravity environment of space presents unusual challenges for scientists and engineers.

Researchers at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory have developed a new tool to help meet that challenge -- a novel design for a low-gravity simulator that promises to break new ground for future space research and habitation.

Their new design for a magnetic levitation-based low-gravity simulator can create an area of low gravity with a volume about 1,000 times larger than existing simulators of the same type. The work was published in the journal npj Microgravity.

"Low gravity has a profound effect on the behaviors of biological systems and also affects many physical processes from the dynamics and heat transfer of fluids to the growth and self-organization of materials," said Wei Guo, associate professor in mechanical engineering and lead scientist on the study. "However, spaceflight experiments are often limited by the high cost and the small payload size and mass. Therefore, developing ground-based low-gravity simulators is important."

Existing simulators, such as drop towers and parabolic aircraft, use free fall to generate near-zero gravity. But these facilities typically have short low-gravity durations, i.e., several seconds to a few minutes, which makes them unsuitable for experiments that require long observation times. On the other hand, magnetic levitation-based simulators (MLS) can offer unique advantages, including low cost, easy accessibility, adjustable gravity, and practically unlimited operation time.

But a conventional MLS can only create a small volume of low gravity. When a typical simulator mimics an environment that is about 1 percent of Earth's gravity, the functional volume is only a few micro-liters, too small for practical space research and applications.

In order to increase the functional volume of an MLS, the researchers needed a magnet that would allow a uniform levitation force to be generated that would balance the gravitational force in a large volume. They found that they could achieve this by integrating a superconducting magnet with a gradient Maxwell coil -- a coil configuration that was first proposed in the 1800s by physicist James Clark Maxwell.

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Breaking the skill limit, pianists attain more delicate touch

 In JST Strategic Basic Research Programs, Drs. Masato Hirano and Shinichi Furuya, Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc., discovered a training method to further improve the delicate touch of pianists.

Experts such as pianists, athletes and surgeons acquire advanced skills through tremendous amounts of practice. It is difficult to further improve upon these skills, and the methods for exceeding these limits have not been clarified.

The research group developed a system that freely controls the weight of piano keys using a haptic device, which enables to control the strength and direction of the force. This same group has also invented active haptic training (AHT) that enhances tactile force sense during exercise by presenting the tasks of discriminating the difference in piano key weights and the correctness of answers. Three experiments were conducted using AHT in 64 pianists and 25 ordinary persons who had received no professional music training. The results showed that enhancing the somatosensory function of fingertips with AHT could improve the accuracy of keystrokes, breaking through the ceiling effect of over-trained skills. Such skill improvement was not observed through usual repetitive practice, or in ordinary persons with no piano experience.

This study demonstrated that, in order to exceed the limits in the exercise skills of experts, it was important to optimize the method rather than increase the amount of training. This finding is expected to be useful for elucidating principles of the nervous system that define the limits in exercise skills, new training theories to exceed the limits of experts' expertise, and functional flexibility (plasticity) of the expert's brain, as well as in the development of rehabilitation methods for neurological disorders in which finger functions were impaired due to excessive training.

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