PARSE: An Augmented-Reality Yaw-Chair Platform for Evaluating Payload Dynamics and Physiological Stress in Parabolic Flight Profiles

We present PARSE, an augmented-reality platform that reproduces parabolic-flight attitude and motion cues for Zero-G™ payload-operations training. Leveraging onboard accelerometer and attitude recordings from NASA Zero-G™ flights, PARSE drives a three-degree-of-freedom motion chair in Unity 3D while rendering GPU-accelerated fluid-dynamics experiments within an immersive AR environment. We validated PARSE by measuring participants’ physiological responses, including skin-conductance peaks, and subjective motion-sickness and workload ratings as they performed standardized payload-operation tasks under PARSE’s motion-cueing profile. Results show that PARSE elicits meaningful vestibular and sympathetic-arousal responses consistent with the dynamic attitude transitions experienced during parabolic flight. These findings demonstrate that PARSE provides a scalable, low-cost training tool capable of preparing operators and students for microgravity payload handling.