System to Evaluate and Assess Holistic Aircrew Workload (SEAHAWK)

The Navy is continually developing new technologies to improve warfighting effectiveness. These technologies risk overloading Aircrews physical and cognitive capacities, thereby degrading performance. To mitigate that risk, the Navy needs a system to assess Aircrews physical and cognitive workloads unobtrusively and objectively. Such a system must (1) perform real-time data collection in a robust and unobtrusive fashion; (2) extract, fuse, and process indicators of physical and cognitive workload; (3) predict performance changes due to the development of expertise among Aircrew; (4) characterize workload at individual, team, and multi-team (system) levels; and (5) display results in a way that supports the information requirements of the users. To meet these requirements Charles River Analytics proposes to design and demonstrate a System to Evaluate and Assess Holistic Aircrew Workload (SEAHAWK). In Phase I, we will deliver a prototype SEAHAWK system that includes: (1) a Sensor Suite, including forehead and peripheral (i.e. arm band) sensors; (2) algorithms to extract, process, and fuse sensor data; (3) algorithms to interpret these data and output assessments of individual and team workload; (4) algorithms to extrapolate the effects of expertise advancement on workload; and (5) a user interface to present output in a format understandable to users.