nasa-tournament-lab
NASA is going freelancer way to seek small projects from the public and is now seeking a new design for astronaut watch from developers that can work and help in space.

The space astronaut watch is a general user interface for smart watch applications for use on the International Space Station, said NASA explaining the scope of the project on Freelancer.com and the reference device is Samsung Gear 2 and the app should function in a viariety of ways to stremline an astronaut’s life in space.

Announced by NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI), which is piloting several such micro-task challenges on public platforms, while major tasks are taken up by its NASA Tournament Lab (NTL).

Apart from Freelancer.com, even GrabCAD.com is being used by NASA to invite such projects froma wider reach as GrabCAD has over 2 million members and Freelancer has almost 16 million members. In addition, NASA is working with the Crowd Innovation Lab (CIL) at Harvard University to evaluate the pilot projects.

Many freelancers participate in NASA contests and Gurgaon-based Tarun Kalia won two such small projects — Developing a detailed 3D model of a blanket stand for use in NASA Robonaut simulation and creating a detailed 3D model of a dumbell stand for use in NASA Robonaut simulation.

Currently, ISS astronauts use laptops and iPads but a smartwatch with apps should free them to conduct more tasks on the space station. Some of the specs that the smartwatch app should have include a caution/warning application, a timer and a communication status application that displays connectivity with ground station through either voice/video, NTL said, insisting that all these functions should be included in a single app. The prize money is $1,500 and the last date is September 9.

Design Features Required:

  • Direct access to information for a task with efficiency
  • Provide appropriate feedback on all actions
  • Be compatible with the smaller Samsung Gear screen
  • Innovative data display on a smartwatch.