Standoff Remote Triage Sensor Array for Robotic Casualty Extraction Systems

Each week, the U.S. Department of Defense provides an online update of American military casualties Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. [DefenseLink] According to this update, as of March 16, 2007, a total of 3,566 have been killed in action and 25,173 soldiers have been wounded in action. These figures represent the largest burden of casualties our military medical personnel have had to cope with since the Vietnam War. As combat medics respond to injured soldiers, they often will come under fire and become injured. Ten percent of casualties in the battlefield are injured while attempting to rescue a previously injured comrade. In order to reduce the causalities of combat medics, robotic technologies are being developed to assist in the assessment and extraction of wounded soldiers. In order to facilitate real-time assessment remote assessment of combat causalities, PERL Research proposes the development of a noninvasive expert system for remote triage and standoff trauma assessment system. The proposed system will provide real-time, continuous estimation of a patient's health status - Dynamic Injury Severity Estimation System (DISE). DISE will be an integrated system of intelligent software and sensors.