Soldier Situational Awareness and Well-being

Several innovative approaches will be explored to restore the diminished audio cues to the soldier in a tactical hostile environment. The threats are electro-optic, electro-mechanical, and explosive weapons designed to inhibit human performance by blinding, deafening, and transmitting subliminal commands disrupting normal cues. The effort enhances soldier awareness in a cocoon situation and permit him to perform the mission functions. These functions include the normal Command, Control and Communications required for tactical situation assessment (enemy and friendly), planning execution, status reporting, location reporting, synchronized action, reconnaissance, and physical well being. Audio appliances and signal processing techniques will combine the audio cue restoral with the required communications input/output devices and permit voice interaction with command and control functions. The integrated approach will eliminate the proliferation of many specialized audio input/output devices. A conformal helmet mounted, spatial audio transducer array will be electronically swept to determine the direction of sounds, focus on areas of interest and capture audio cues. Signal processing research will regenerate the captured sounds for presentation to the listener in an encapsulating helmet such that audio cues seem natural and permit sound source direction, tracking, and identity awareness. Immediate applications for surveillance, drug interdiction, hearing protection, human audio sensor enhancement from tactical battlefield to foreign mission assignments. Use of the acoustic control and audio cue restoral to benefit in high noise production lines, virtual training, and when workers must wear encapsulating clothing as in asbestos removal, environmental clean-up, nuclear biological active areas, microchip clean rooms, riot control, and fire fighting.