Integrative Platform for Cognative Workload Assessment

In modern military operating environments, military personnel are faced with the challenge of accomplishing more with less human resources. To meet this challenge, each personnel must be able to function optimally. In other words, each operator's cognitive resources must be maximized and delegation of tasks by supervisors to each operator must be based upon knowledge of the soldier's remaining cognitive capabilities. Towards this end, the DOD wishes to develop an integrated workstation for the monitoring of the operator's cognitive state. In this application we propose to build a software platform that will provide the foundation for an integrated, user centered monitoring workstation. The software will provide the architecture for the integration of multiple, cognitive-load sensitive, psychophysiological signals and real-time analysis engines for each of these signals. The architecture will support local as well as network access to the operator's cognitive state. We will also conduct functional studies in which an operator's EEG electrocardiogram, electrodermal activity and pupilometry signals will be analyzed to index the operator's cognitive workload. These studies will test the feasibility of building an integrated monitoring workstation of cognitive workload assessment.