A Hands-Free Human/Robot Interface for Soldiers in the Field Based on Aural Flow Monitoring

Future military engagements demand the use of robotic agents alongside warfighters during field operation. Beyond effectively interacting with each other, such agents must be able to seamlessly accept complex commands and mission directives from their manned counterparts. The current generation of man-machine interface technologies, however, falls well short of the necessary robustness, precision, and ease-of-use necessary for a soldier to effectively command such units during military missions. Think-A-Move, Ltd. has teamed with The Naval Postgraduate School, Case Western Reserve University, and Southern Illinois University, to propose the development of an unobtrusive sensor-based control system for human-machine interface to command military platforms. Leveraging past successes in generating control signals from physiological recording and processing, the interface will be capable of directing robotic devices in response to tongue movement and/or speech without insertion of any device in the vicinity of the oral cavity. Phase I work will: 1) design and simulate a candidate solder-machine interface system, 2) design signal processing and filtering algorithms to map physiological disturbance, 3) develop speech interfaces for performance augmentation, and 4) demonstrate the soldier-machine interface on a robotic hardware platform.