Smart Helmet: Sensor Integrated Personalized Defense System for the Warfighter
Abstract
Standard issue military helmets are relatively heavy and offer limited ballistic protection and little-to-no protection against blast, blunt and directed energy attacks. DoD has undertaken extensive efforts to improve combat helmet designs and manufacturing processes across multiple service branches in recent decades, with the development of the Future Assault Shell Technology (FAST) helmet, the Maritime helmet and the U.S. Marine Corps Enhanced Combat Helmet (ECH) being notable, along with the Armys Helmet Electronics and Display SystemUpgradeable Protection (HEaDS-UP) program.The equipment provided by this DURIP will be integrated with current research infrastructure to create a streamlined system to enable the design and development of the Smart Helmet, a revolutionary wearable technology that combines the latest advances in materials science, dditive manufacturing, and artificial intelligence designed to enhance the survivability and lethality of the warfighter. The Smart Helmet will provide greater overall protection and nhanced offensive capability for the warfighter by improving their mobility, agility and lethality. Effective protection will be provided by improved survivability from ballistic, blast, blunt and directed energies coupled with individual-level diagnostics. Increased lethality will be characterized by improved situational awareness (external sensing), communications, device integration and modularization. Improved wearability will be characterized by increased durability and comfort while substantially decreasing weight. This smart helmet system will be significantly lighter (<2.5 lbs.), stronger (stop .45 caliber bullet at a velocity of 800 fps) and adaptive (AI and sensor enhanced performance) resulting in increased combat effectiveness and lethality of warfighters, reduced casualties from current and emerging battlefield threats, and reduced injuries from better helmet ergonomics.By re-imagining the helmet as a wearable device that looks both inward (to assess health and cognitive function) and outward (to identify threats and improve situational awareness), the Smart Helmet is a leap ahead in combat helmet advancementnot an incremental improvementthat integrates advances in nanomaterials, artificial intelligence, batteries and sensors to create a self-contained, compact, lightweight device that both protects and enhances the combat capability of the warfighter. At Rice University, our group has pioneered the design and development of Computational imaging system, a sensor system that combines optical computing (which is extremely power efficient), with heavily optimized on-chip machine learning algorithms, can reduce the power requirements by two orders of magnitude enabling intelligent, light-weight, compact and inexpensive imaging. With these goals in mind, we will use this DURIP award to fabricate, test, and characterize the Smart Helmet with Integrated computation and Communication Miniature imaging devices. If realized, these advances would revolutionize real-time, situational awareness in the battlefield, providing a significant strategic benefit to the individual warfighter.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 05, 2021
- Source ID
- N000142112487
Entities
People
- Paul Cherukuri
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Rice University
- United States Navy