BARRON ASSOCIATES, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N192-071

Description

Barron Associates proposes development of the INSIGHT technology that will apply statistical learningmethods to achieve robust classification and/or estimation of pilot workload (PWL) based on pilot physiological and activity measures. PWL is reflective of both pilot stress and task difficulty, both of which are affected by aircraft handling qualities. INSIGHT consists of a suite of sensors customized in form and function for realistic piloting tasks and advanced signal processing and data science algorithms based on Deep Neural Network and time-frequency analysis to learn of functional form of PWL from physiological measures and correlate these to handling qualities. The final product can be used to not only correlate physiological measures and workload with subjective handling quality ratings but also to gain a deeper understanding of the handling qualities evaluation process. The primary technical challenges are twofold: first, developing a sensor suite optimized for the cockpit environment, and second, determining the relationship between the physiological measurements, workload, and eventually handling qualities. This latter task will be accomplished using advanced signal processing and functional modeling techniques.