Future human spaceflight exploration missions to the Moon and beyond are hypothesised to benefit from human-robotic integrated operations. The European Space Agency focuses on preparing these operations, following the objective stated in the Global Exploration Roadmap of the International Space Exploration Coordination Group. Currently, human-robotic operations aim at technology development and demonstration, yet essential questions that remain unanswered are: How can human performance be measured, and which metrics are used? This contribution aims at answering this by preparing a pilot phase focusing on human performance assessment for subjects controlling a rover. A recent study by Hosseini (2016) for ESA identified essential knowledge gaps that must be filled to assess astronaut performance for tele-operations, which is of great importance for future missions since they affect mission planning, task allocation and even tool selection. In this regard, this study proposes follow-on research in which a tele-operations experiment is conducted by driving a rover, in order to evaluate human performance in tele-operations. In the previous study, two space-to-ground and multiple ground-to-ground tele-operations experiments were analysed in which subjects controlled a rover. Data analysis studied the command time and execution time of the assigned tasks, i.e. the time it takes for the human to give the command to the rover and the time it takes for the rover to execute its tasks, respectively. Results showed that the main challenge for performance assessment is the lack of recorded parameters. The logged data is limited only to time values and success/failure results and it does not specify performance variations. Furthermore, the study concludes that many different sub-tasks were performed in a limited amount of time, resulting in scarce data per sub-task and limiting the statistical significance. Follow-on research is proposed that aims at solving for the two above mentioned issues. Firstly, the study introduces parameters, which are used to assess the performance of pilots regarding neuro-ergonomics and human factors. Secondly, an experiment is set up and is tested for its rigidity in a protocol rehearsal, prior to performing the experiment with a relatively large group of participants. It is hypothesised that this approach has the potential not only to increase the qualitative assessment of the performance, but also to increase the quantitative results essential for preparing crew training and future missions.

On July 28th 2014, 23:47 UTC, the European Space Agency launched the Haptics-1 Kit to the International Space Station (ISS) on its last Automated Transfer Vehicle ATV-5. The Kit reached the station two weeks later, marking the first haptic master device to enter the ISS. The first force-feedback and human perceptual motor performance tests started to take place on December 30th 2014, and are the first of their kind in the history of spaceflight. Three astronauts participated in the Haptics-1 experiment until November 2015, allowing the investigation of the effects of microgravity on various psycho-motor performance metrics related with the usage of haptic feedback. Experiments are conducted following full adaptation to the space environment (after 3 months in space). This paper introduces the Haptics-1 experiment and associated hardware. Detailed experimental results are reported from a first stiffness just noticeable difference (JND) experimental study in space, carried out on the ISS and pre-flight on ground with 3 astronauts. The first findings from the experiment show no major alterations in-flight, when compared to on-ground data, if the manipulandum is secured in flight against a sufficiently stiff reference structure.