SUPPORT: Sensing Using Physical and Psychological Observations for Rehabilitating Troops

SIFT has been awarded a contract under OSD08-H06 titled “Sensing Using Physical and Psychological Observations for Rehabilitating Troops (SUPPORT) (Contract # W81XWH-08-C-0738, POC: Ashley Glenn, Jennifer Bloomberg, 301-619-3146). This project is designing a smart home technology that can monitor and aid traumatic brain injury patients in their home environment. The user interface incorporates SIFT’s etiquette engine to leverage anthropomorphism tendencies and provide feedback on subjects that cannot easily be detected by commercially available sensors such as mood or appetite.

 

SIFT proposes that innovative and technology rich solutions are needed to provide low cost and widely distributable methods to support soldiers with minor Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI). Soldiers recovering from mTBI have impaired performance in memory and problem solving tasks, which affects their activities of daily living (ADLs), and instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). SUPPORT employs an Intelligent reminding mechanisms to monitor user activities and act as a cognitive prosthetic to compensate for the human’s deficits in memory and task tracking. Smart home and monitoring technologies have already emerged as successful solutions for maintaining the independence of other populations such as the elderly. While the elderly and soldier populations are very different, there exist significant opportunities in adapting this technology to address the needs of recovering soldiers. SUPPORT combines smart home monitoring technologies with established theory from sociology and linguistics to create human-computer interactions designed to encourage treatment compliance and promote a therapeutic alliance between the end user and the system.

PI: Ms. Peggy Wu