The impact of isolation on a persons health and mental health can be hefty: indeed it is listed by NASA as one of the five hazards of space flight, serious enough to have specialised research dedicated to it [1]. It can degrade crew performance, increase conflict and even jeopordise missions. In fact, a lack of social relationships' prediction of mortality is even comparable to other risk factors such as smoking, increasing risk of death over long periods by up to 50% [6]. We are seeing many of the same effects on Earth in people who are socially isolating from one another to prevent the spread of COVID 19, and this leads to the question: what can be done to reduce the effects of this isolation?
We wanted to address the mental health issues brought about from extended social isolation and found we could kill two birds with one stone: exercise has been proven to help with managing stress [4] and is also good for a person's general health and wellbeing [7]. Combining this with the opportunity to connect people gave us a solution: Connect Fit.
Connect Fit is the adjustable resistance trainer and companion app concept that we have designed to tackle the isolation problem from this front. The aim is to make exercising cheaper and more connected by having a single adjustable tool for exercising and an app to communicate with partners so that they can spot you virtually and reintroduce the social element of working out when socially isolating. We hope that this connectivity will not only help motivate people to exercise (and reap the aforementioned rewards from it) but also directly takle isolation by giving people another opportunity to interact socially like they would if they were not socially isolating.
Space flight to distant planets would require long journeys with extended periods of isolation [1]. While the connective aspects of our solution might not be feasible in space flight, the adjustable trainer could provide a cheap, portable and lightweight alternative to the bulky and complex machines currently in use on the ISS, with the ability to fix the tool to hardpoints on the inner hull for secure and comfortable use.
Given more development time we would hope to endow the app with the features promised: face-to-face connectivity, lists of recommended workouts and even expert advice. The connective features could be used in other isolated environments though, including but not limited to: Arctic and Antarctic research bases; marine biologists spending extended periods of time alone at sea; geologists mapping terrain in remote locations for long periods of time.
We began to choose a challenge by creating a list of our skills and a list of skills required by each challenge, this then let us eliminate certain challenges which we felt like we couldn't effectively tackle. We also compared and contrasted our available data and to choose a challenge accurately. After this process, each of our members created a list of four of their favourite challenges and the two that overlapped the most was "The Isolation Solution" and "A World Away". Then we got inspired by the fact that we are all isolated at the moment and formed a personal connection to the task so we especially wanted to create a solution that could benefit us and everyone who is facing the same problem as us and make a contribution to everyone whose mental health may depend on social interaction and thus chose The Isolation Solution.
We started developing our project where most logical people go to begin on a project, we did a lot of research! We set up a call and assigned certain research tasks to each of the Connect Four members, from things varying to talking to Subject Matter Experts who participated in isolated simulations to Mars, to the extensive data from NASA and other space organisations. Once the idea crystallised we doled out roles to each member including writing a script for the presentation video, producing and editing the visuals for said video, creating a 3D render of the resistance trainer and writing the beginnings of a working app.
We used NASA and partner program data to understand the physical and mental challenges of long term isolation [3] , including the Mars-500 program [5] and the HI-SEAS program [6]. We took inspiration from project ideas submitted to NASA and ESAs page on exercising in space [12] to design our tool [9][10][11].
Hardware tools include the joint efforts of our individual personal computers, and at times our mobile devices (to test and record the app).
Software tools include: Fusion 360, used to render a 3D model of the suggested fitness tool; various Adobe suite software solutions were used to edit and render the final video presentation; MIT app inventor 2, to write the app seen in the presentation video; Bandicam, to record sections of the screen, allowing us to cleanly show computer work; Paint.net, for designing the logo and other image editing.
We wanted the product to be cheap, light and portable so we did some research into materials and settled on an aluminium frame with nylon wheels [14] and polyester cables [13] for the commercial version and with aluminium wheels for the heavy-duty one. These decisions are based on aluminium's superior specific strength compared to alternatives like steel [15] and polyester rope's resistance to abrasion for a more durable tool with a longer service life.
For the future a version of the tool incorporating ropes made from graphene fibres would be ideal due to the incredible specific strength of graphene [15] lending itself perfectly to potential space equipment.
One of the challenges we faced was compressing the mechanics of our tool into a compact space and we employed multiple methods to accomplish this. The primary feature of our design was using pulleys to gain mechanical advantage in order to vary the resistance. We used an elastic object to provide the initial resistance, then set up the pulleys such that the user can attach the load rope to different places in the system to reduce or increase resistance. These would be outlined and made obvious for users. To adjust the tool, the load rope can be attached further along the pulley system, which gives more mechanical advantage and less resistance. However, at high resistances the extension of the rope was greatly reduced. To combat this, we added more slack rope in the system to allow reasonable extension distances, even at max resistance. This led to the majority of internal space being taken up by rope, making it easily collapsible. This feature was not included in the current design but could be in future designs.
Initially we had decided to use springs for resistance, due to their durability. However, we later switched to rubber resistance bands because we were assured by a subject expert that the bands would be durable enough and the bands can be stored more compactly while being able to stretch longer distances, bringing greater usability and taking less space. We also aimed to reduce resistance and waste energy by using ball bearings for pulleys and a low friction rail on the lower pulley holding racks.
There was a mild language barrier at some points as one of our team members was not a native English speaker like the other three, but misunderstandings never lasted long and we were able to communicate clearly and frequently throughout the whole project.
Coming up with the initial team name was a fun moment, we celebrated having a creative name to rally behind! Other moments were the finalisation of the 3D render, which took a long time and the completion of the video, which was the culmination of all our efforts.
Our website: https://connectfourteam.co/
1. https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/5-hazards-of-human-spaceflight
2. https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/bodyinspace
3. https://taskbook.nasaprs.com/tbp/index.cfm?action=public_query_taskbook_content&TASKID=12495
5. http://mars500.imbp.ru/en/520_one_year.html
6. http://hi-seas.org/?page_id=5990
7. https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
9. https://techport.nasa.gov/view/7312
10. https://techport.nasa.gov/view/18873
11. https://techport.nasa.gov/view/23218
14. https://jjcassociates.com/all-about-pulleys-what-and-when-to-use-a-material/