NIUVT-Sailor Cognizant Awareness
Abstract
Fatigue attributed to sleep deprivation is a serious problem for the Navy that significantly impacts both cognitive and physical performance. Diminished cognitive and physical performance will limit naval personnel’s ability to communicate and execute mission related tasks in an effective and timely manner which can hamper mission goals. To mitigate the impact of sleep deprivation on Navy personnel while deployed, we need to firstly understand the quality and duration of sleep experienced by Navy personnel and secondly evaluate how these factors impact their operational readiness. However, existing solutions to estimate performance degradation due to sleep deprivation are fragmentary. First, they rely on either rudimentary actigraphy-based sleep sensors or participants’ subjective reports (e.g., diary), which are limited to accurately measure sleep quality parameters. Second, they often focus on either impairment of alertness and decision-making process or fatigue related safety risk assessment under sleep deprivation conditions. These conventional models cannot be deployed where both cognitive and physical performance degradation should be considered simultaneously. Lastly, they are not tested and evaluated in operating environments of the Navy. Most of existing solutions are stemmed from simple biomathematical models and generalized for common workplace settings, not in Navy environments. Thus, the main goal of this study is to characterize effects of sleep disruption in terms of cognitive and physical performance degradation and to develop a novel model to assess fatigue related operation risks due to cognitive and physical performance degradation. Specifically, this study will develop an array of wearable sensors to continuously monitor individuals for an extended period to assess the short- and long-term effects varying sleep quality and quantity have on cognitive and physical functions. This project is a continuation of a previous funded project (N00014-20-1-2708) as it extends the previous work to evaluate how changes in sleep alter changes in performance. The previous work investigated how taxing cognitive based tasks and stimuli alter physical performance during dynamic tasks. However, in this new work, we will evaluate how sleep deprivation alters performance degradation over time. In the previous studies, either a cognitive or physical perturbation was applied to the participants during a dynamic task to assess the immediate, direct impact these perturbations had on individuals. The current study differs from the previous studies, as sleep serves as both a physical and cognitive perturbation. Furthermore, the project team will monitor the changes in performance over an extended time period (i.e. days/weeks). This is possible with the development of a wristwatch that the team is developing. This wristwatch will allow us to draw direct correlations between the amounts of sleep an individual gets to their change in performance using a custom algorithm that we will also develop. Since this work is functioning as a continuation of the previous work, our IRB will be similar to the previous IRB in that it will evaluate changes in physical performance from changes in movement patterns and physiological signals using wearable sensors and motion capture analysis. However, to acknowledge how this work is an extension of the previous work we have modified the IRB to include the development of the wristwatch and the daily remote monitoring of the changes in individuals performance over time:
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Dec 04, 2020
- Source ID
- N000142112028
Entities
People
- Richard E. Christenson
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Connecticut