Innovative Portable Auditory Localization Acclimation-Test (PALAT) System for Military Applications
Abstract
Over the past decade, advanced hearing protection devices (HPDs) and Tactical Communications and Protection Systems (TCAPS) for mili"tary personnel have raised serious concerns about their potential for impacting users auditory situation awareness. While the resea"rch of Casali & Lee (2016), which ultimately led to the development of a test battery called DRILCOM, demonstrated that HPDs and TCA""PS often degraded users abilities for detection, recognition/identification, localization and communication, it is the localization"" element that is most compromised by the largest number of devices, and also the most critical element to tactical effectiveness and"" safety. Unfortunately, warfighters are now deployed with TCAPS with little or no training about how their localization ability will"" be affected, and furthermore, current state of the art TCAPS designs have been shown to negatively impact localization performance"" in untrained users, as compared to their performance with the open ear. It will likely be many years (if ever) before TCAPS can pro""vide the same localization capability as the open ear (Casali & Robinette, 2014). This fact, coupled with the absence of auditory si""tuation awareness training in the military, provides strong motivation for this proposal s objective -- the development and validati""on of a straightforward, easily-administered, highly portable, and objective system that will instill auditory localization skills i""n the warfighter over a regimented series of learning trials, and do so both with and without an assigned TCAPS device. The proposed"" research capitalizes, both operationally and financially, upon the Virginia Tech Auditory Systems Lab s development of the DRILCOM"" test system, and what has been learned from the application of that system, and proposes a 3-Phase plan, as follows. Phase 1 is d""evoted to employing DRILCOM s 12 directional loudspeakers to provide a ""full-scale, laboratory-grade"" system for localization skills" acquisition and improvement. Up to 12 military-relevant signals will be used as test stimuli. Learning trial protocols will include": 1) known signal source loudspeaker location, 2) random loudspeaker location, 3) practice on speaker locations that were missed in"" prior trials, 4) subject s choice to practice on difficult speaker locations, and 5) a final test with speaker locations presented"" in random order. Objective performance measures of ballpark localization accuracy, exact localization accuracy, and speed of respon""se will be measured via computer.Phase 2 will entail a conversion of the ""full-size, laboratory-grade"" localization system develop""ed in Phase 1, to a ""Portable Auditory Localization Acclimation-Test"" (PALAT) system. It will store in a suitcase, and can be setup"" and used by a military trainee in his/her down-time, such as a Marine in basic training who has an assigned TCAPS. The PALAT system"" will present localization acclimation trials via a ""halo"" of highly directional, small loudspeakers around the head. Once a pre-det""ermined asymptotic level of localization performance is achieved, the user will be notified and the acclimation trials discontinued." The PALAT system will undergo experimentation on a common group of 12 subjects who also will be acclimated and tested using the ful"l-size, laboratory-grade system of Phase 1, with the PALAT and full-size lab system being presented in counterbalanced order and the" results compared. Phase 3 will apply a rigorous in-field validation experiment on the PALAT portable system. Each of 12 subjects will first be taught to localize the military-relevant signals in azimuth on the PALAT system. Then each subject will be taken to a" remote field test site that was prior employed in a gunshot localization experiment by Casali, Talcott, Keady & Killion (2012). At"" the field site, the same localization signals presented by the PALAT system will be employed, and the subject will be required t
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jun 09, 2017
- Source ID
- N000141712595
Entities
People
- John Casali
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- Virginia Tech