Neurophysiological Materials: Enhancing Airman Cognitive Capabilities Through Advanced Sensor Technology
As the Air Force drives toward the capability to sustain mission success during high performance and long-duration flight, rapid assessment and augmentation of cognitive readiness become crucial to maximize the warfighter’s potential and inform the Joint Area Domain Command and Control (JADC2) network. While physiological monitoring capabilities are rapidly beginning to meet the needs of the airborne environment, to date an airworthy, closed-loop, cognitive assessment, and augmentation system currently do not exist. This capability gap is largely due to gravitational acceleration, ambient noise, and other potential electromagnetic interference which disrupts signal continuity and reliability of many physiological monitoring capabilities. In addition, size, weight, power, and form factor become complicating factors. With 20% of the 182 NTSB investigations leading to fatigue as a cause and an increased Class C airline mishap rates of 40% from 2013 to 2017, a need exists to integrate multiple physiological monitoring tools and modalities into the cockpit environment coupled with reliable predictive algorithms. Such a solution would also affect EMS operations and potentially the aeromedical evacuation mission as more than half of EMS clinicians have reported severe mental and/or physical fatigue. AFRL is contributing to the future of human-machine interface (HMI) in high performance and long duration flight by tackling material, sensor, prototyping, and manufacturing challenges that make such sensing capabilities impossible in the cockpit today. The main objective is to create aerospace-resilient monitoring solutions through successful identification of standard reliable and validated fatigue indices and mitigation success. This presentation will introduce the concept, summarize potential solutions, describe efforts in place to develop novel technology, and discuss future AFRL investments toward cognitive monitoring and enhancement in airborne environments.
