Cognitive Assessment and Prediction to Promote Individualized Capability Augmentation and Reduce Decrement (CAPT PICARD)

Manned NASA missions include long periods of low workload, followed by sudden, high tempo operations. This can be detrimental to situational awareness and operational readiness. During these missions, disrupted sleep, long-term motion exposure, lack of normal gravity, and other operational characteristics result in fatigue, stress, decreased mood, and impaired cognitive and psychomotor functioning. An unobtrusive system to measure, assess, and predict astronaut workload could warn astronauts or mission control when steps should be taken to augment cognitive readiness. This system would also be useful during testing and engineering when tools and systems are being evaluated. Engineers could accurately evaluate the cognitive and physical demands of these tools, and the effects they will have on task performance and accuracy. Charles River Analytics proposes to design and demonstrate a system for Cognitive Assessment and Prediction to Promote Individualized Capability Augmentation and Reduce Decrement (CAPT PICARD). CAPT PICARD will: (1) use a suite of sensors to perform real-time synchronous data collection in a robust and unobtrusive fashion, and provide a holistic assessment of the astronaut; (2) extract, fuse, and interpret the best combination of indicators of astronaut state; (3) comprehensively predict performance deficits, optimizing the likelihood of mission success; and (4) display the data to support the information requirements of any user. Phase I goals defined in the solicitation are a literature review and design of an algorithm to assess workload. These will be a major focus; however, there is substantial overlap between CAPT PICARD and related efforts at Charles River. Therefore, we will go beyond that expectation and demonstrate a functional prototype. Meeting these requirements will dramatically improve astronaut mission readiness and the design and development of the tools used to assist them in carrying out mission objectives.