Intelligent Automation, Inc. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: DHA211-004

Description

Service members face a wide variety of risks to both health and safety in carrying out their duties. While not all hazards are avoidable, many are, particularly those encountered off the battlefield in an occupational environment. Noise, airborne chemicals and particulates, and heat/cold stress exposures undermine the health and operational readiness of service members across branches. Exposure data in isolation can provide information around what an individual is exposed to, but not around how they were exposed. In order to overcome challenges in contextualizing exposures and providing effective interventions, Intelligent Automation, Inc. proposes SALUTEM. SALUTEM is a wearable device with accompanying analysis software that automatically classifies the occupational tasks being performed by the wearer throughout the day via machine learning models applied to onboard sensor data. By emphasizing model size minimization and efficiency, SALUTEM will require fewer computational resources and smaller datasets to be rapidly retrained to accurately classify new tasks in a real-world setting. The inclusion of a flexible data handling architecture will enable exposure data to be collected and analyzed from embedded or external occupational exposure sensors.