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Spaceflight missions are among the most ambitious endeavors of the coming decades. These missions require innovative technologies to address the significant physical and cognitive demands placed on crews over extended periods and to ensure their operational readiness under challenging conditions. The ExoAssist project contributes to this objective by developing an active full-body exoskeleton that serves as an intuitive and adaptive human–machine interface. Combined with augmented reality, the system enables intuitive telemanipulation and supports astronauts in performing complex robotic operations during crewed space missions.

The objective of ExoAssist is to reduce the physical and cognitive workload of operators by enabling intuitive telemanipulation of complex robotic systems.

Advances in the miniaturization, robustness, and energy efficiency of robotic systems are expanding their use in challenging environments such as space. At the same time, increasing system complexity requires novel human–machine interfaces that enable precise, safe, and efficient operation.

To address these challenges, ExoAssist develops an active full-body exoskeleton that serves as a high-precision interface for telemanipulation. The system captures the operator's full-body movements and combines haptic, kinesthetic, and visual feedback to provide immersive and intuitive robot control. Extended Reality (XR) enhances situational awareness through an immersive visual interface, enabling the precise execution of complex manipulation tasks in remote environments. The virtual environment is generated from available mission data and continuously refined using real-time sensor information from the robotic system. Modular information overlays provide context-specific guidance while maintaining an intuitive user interface. In addition, the operator's cognitive workload is continuously monitored, allowing the interaction to adapt dynamically and ensure safe, efficient, and user-centered operation in demanding space missions.