Award Data

In this project, Sonalysts will team with the University of North Dakota to establish the feasibility of a deployable, unobtrusive suite of sensors and data processing approaches collectively known as Cognitively-Oriented Physiological Indicators of Load, Operational performance, and Tension (CO-PILOT). CO-PILOT will provide real-time indicators of operator state that can be used to inform adaptiv ...

Human-machine teams are increasingly prevalent across the DoD. These teams unite human operators with advanced automated teammates to execute complex, mission-critical tasks. Unfortunately, this collaboration between automated and human teammates can increase operator strain, because operators must complete their own tasks while also monitoring teammates and distributing tasks; one specific strain ...

We propose to investigate, in collaboration with the Massachusetts General Hospital Voice Center and Altec, Inc., the application of surface electromyography (sEMG) to assessing cognitive workload, strain, and overload. Specifically, sEMG sensors placed on the face and neck will detect emotional/motor responses to workload strain. The proposed effort will build on the substantial sEMG experience o ...

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in air, especially in closed environments pose a major health threat. There is a critical need to remove these pollutant, and biofiltration is a promising solution to this need. This is a Phase I STTR proposal to develop...

Modern defense systems place high cognitive demands on warfighters, often taxing the limit of human capabilities and causing operators to suffer Acute Cognitive Strain (ACS), wherein performance deteriorates markedly, leading to a loss of situational awareness and control, and decrements in team cooperativity. ACS leads to physiological changes driven by sympathetic system activation, including i ...

This STTR project aims to assess the feasibility of using laryngeal EMG to detect operator workload and strain. Phase I will develop a wearable neckband device positioning an array of laryngeal EMG electrodes plus additional sensors for measuring masseter EMG, heart rate variability, GSR and estimated relative blood pressure. The neckband will be optimized to be both wearable, comfortable and resi ...

Effective management of air quality in closed environments is important for the health and performance of military personnel. High concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including aromatics, halocarbons, and aldehydes are present in spacecraft and submarines. Traditional approaches to treat VOCs based on catalytic oxidation or photooxidation are costly, bulky, and not effective at low ...

It has long been known that analog computers can be faster and more power efficient than digital processors by many orders of magnitude. Until the 1970s analog computers were the dominant controllers in most industrial and military applications. Even today digital processors are still slower and more power consumptive than analog, but offer much more flexibility (programmability) and precision. ...

Spero Devices is proposing design of a memristor-CMOS co-processor to implement analog Discrete Fourier Transforms (DFTs). The analog co-processor invokes spectral methods to solve a class of linear and non-linear partial differential equations (PDEs) arising in the scientific simulation of complex systems. Current PDE solution methods are inefficient and often intractable due to limitations assoc ...

Allostery, molecular recognition, genetic actuators, metabolic engineering, biosurveillance, high-throughput screening, selection