Astronaut Hand Health Monitoring

Inspiration

Did you know that astronauts experience a significant decline in hand strength during long-term missions, with up to a 45% reduction in just six months? Our project, AstroGrip, tackled this unique challenge: monitoring astronaut health in space through hand movement analysis. Inspired by the resilience of astronaut Michael “Rich” Clifford, who overcame Parkinson’s disease during his NASA career, we set out to create a solution that supports astronauts and individuals on Earth facing mobility challenges.

What it does

Using cutting-edge tools like Mediapipe, Flask, and APIs, we developed a system that tracks hand metrics such as grip strength, precision, and tremor analysis. These metrics are analyzed, and the model is trained using user-specific historical data to deliver personalized feedback for every exercise. What makes our software truly remarkable is that it puts critical hand health data right at astronauts' fingertips—literally empowering them to monitor and improve their well-being on the go! 🚀🖐️

Challenges we ran into

Though the gravity of the challenge was intense, we stayed over the moon about the process. One challenge we faced was finding a visually appealing UI to display the hand health data after the complete analysis for each end-user. Another challenge we encountered was seamlessly connecting our back end to the front end. Integrating Mediapipe proved particularly tricky due to compatibility issues with online deployment. After much trial and error, we overcame this hurdle by utilizing a Docker file, which allowed us to streamline the integration and ensure smooth functionality.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

To my team: I am so proud of what we accomplished in just 24 hours. I believe we have proven we pushed past the stars! ✨

What we learned

This was also my first time working with AI and machine learning integration—and it was truly out of this world! 🌠

What's next for Astronaut Hand Health Monitoring

We hope our project ignites the explorer and innovator in you, reminding us that with creativity and determination, even the vastness of space holds no limits!