Toward Autonomous Casualty Care: Networked Control of Dynamic Physiological System
Abstract
The overarching goal of this project is to develop a basic and unified methodological framework to enable interventional autonomy to achieve homeostasis in complex and time-varying networks of heterogeneous dynamic systems, with a translational emphasis on autonomous casualty care. The outcomes of this basic research can potentially address a wide range of complex safety-critical control problems in the DOD space, with an initial focus to impact automated medical care (which is a hallmark example of DOD-relevant safety-critical complex systems). Toward the overarching goal, this project will achieve 3 near-term objectives: (i) establish critical research questions to be addressed to achieve the overarching goal; (ii) develop a network of potential collaborators with expertise required to solve the posed research questions; and (iii) discover resources required to address the posed research questions. In preparation for the proposed research effort, we have conducted extensive preliminary work on physiological closed-loop controlled (PCLC-ed) automation of critical care and combat casualty care with the support of the ONR Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award and follow-up grants, including (i) invited perspective article on physiological closed-loop control systems (published in Progress in Biomedical Engineering in 2023), (ii) rigorous analysis of control loop conflicts in the context of automated critical care, (iii) development of holistic physiological monitoring methods, (iv) development of algorithms for mediation of automated treatment control loops with conflicts, (v) development of context-aware casualty resuscitation methods using wearable-enabled sensing and machine learning-based analytics, and (vi) development of real-time physiological signal processing algorithms.In this project, we will (i) conduct an extensive survey of the state-of-the-art on PCLC as well as continue our long-standing research endeavor in the field of PCLC supported by the ONR to create a list of critical research questions to be addressed to develop a basic and unified methodological framework to enable interventional autonomy to achieve homeostasis in complex and time-varying networks of heterogeneous dynamic systems; (ii) identify a list of multi-disciplinary expertise required to achieve our vision on the next-generation PCLC, as informed bythe knowledge generated from our extensive state-of-the-art survey of PCLC and our ongoing research endeavor in the field of PCLC, and develop a network of potential collaborators armed with these capabilities beyond our own; and (iii) discover resources suited to address and solve the research questions established in this project. The outcome of this project will be followed by a large-scale multidisciplinary research effort to address the research questions posed in this project with the collaborators by leveraging the discovered resources.From the perspective of autonomous casualty care, the fundamental knowledge to be developed in this project is essential to guide the development of autonomous medical care capability for combat casualties on the battlefield. In addition, since the complex, time-varying, and networked dynamic systems considered in this project can be abstractions of many important DOD challenges, including homeostasis in combat casualties and a platoon of autonomous drones and evacuation vehicles to list a few. Hence, the theoretical frameworks to be developed with the help of this project can be broadly generalizable to many complex control and automation problems relevant to safety-critical DOD missions.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Nov 08, 2024
- Source ID
- N000142412406
Entities
People
- Jin-Oh Hahn
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Maryland