ARETE ASSOCIATES — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A18-065

Description

Areté Associates’ Battlefield Audio/visual Triage and Treatment Monitoring Device (BATT-MD) is the monitoring subsystem for a future, ruggedized, low-SWaP autonomous casualty care system capable of operating in real time in a forward operating environment. Medics are trained to use communication and observation to gauge the status of the patient within the first few seconds of patient interaction as well as during ongoing monitoring; a good medic can make a priority decision--within seconds--using only their eyes and ears. Our proposed system aims to translate medic audio and visual perception to an automated patient monitoring system, enabling it to immediately start evaluating the patient through EO camera and microphone before vitals sensors have even been attached. The insights gained from monitoring will be rendered into a knowledge base which will be accessible to the diagnostics and intervention subsystems. During Phase I, Areté will develop algorithms with the goal of enabling a BATT-MD demonstration which shows the utility and feasibility of visual monitoring for automatic pose mapping and wound detection (using machine learning techniques), and audio monitoring for alertness and orientation checking (using speech-to-text and natural language processing for semantic parsing). The demonstration will include the output of a knowledge base.