Compact Infrared Countermeasure Jam Head

The goal of this project is to develop a non-intrusive commercialoperator cognitive-state assessment system to assess the alertnesslevel of human operators at military or civilian workstations. Asover fifty years of research in human vigilance and attention hasshown, humans are not well-suited to maintaining alertness andattention under monotonous conditions. As the world's largestemployer of shift-work personnel, the Navy/Marine corps isparticularlyvulnerable to circadian fatigue/alertness challenges and thus isin a position to receive the most benefit from our research anddevelopment results.During Phase I, we have successfully demonstrated thefeasibility of using state-of-the-art, preparation-free dryEEG electrodes to accurately track behaviorally definedchanges in drowsiness, and have also demonstrated thefeasibility of using video-based eye tracking to extractfatigure-related changes in eyeblink characteristics.We have also identified a target application for initial productdevelopment, vehicle operations, have demonstrated thefeasibility ofaccurately estimating changes in driving performance during arealisticdriving task. Further, we have secured a support agreement from acommercial sponsor, DENSO Corporation, a world-leading automotivecomponent manufacturer, which has agreed to provide matchingsupportfor our Phase II/III research, prototype development and fieldtesting. Based on these promising results and achievements, weareconfident that our envisioned alertness monitoring system istechnically feasible and has realistic prospects for near-termcommercial and military application.