Radical Improvements in Personnel Performance through Enhanced Development (RIPPED)

While the proliferation of wearable technologies and personalized data analytics has yielded countless opportunities, human performance has become a crowded space.  It can be difficult to distinguish meaningful - let alone radical - impacts of a particular intervention. In individuals that are already pushing themselves toward optimized performance, including members of the US military, the impact of a specific intervention may be difficult to discern.  When a 2% increase in performance makes the difference between success and failure, most wearable technology is simply not sensitive enough to detect it. The Air Force and Air Force Research Laboratory seek to identify technologies that will demonstrate “big gain” improvements to human performance. Mantel proposes multiple non-invasive neurostimulation interventions as the technologies that will yield the impact and wearable neurostim devices that mimic the laboratory interventions for individuals wherever they may be located. After validating the safety and efficacy of the wearable technologies, the interventions will be tested in an operationally relevant environment. Additionally the wearables will progress toward a productized device that will be positioned to pursue approval as a medical device.