LAWTON, Okla. (KSWO) – Oklahoma State University is collaborating with Torch Technologies, Inc. on the Fires Innovation Science and Technology Accelerator to study how troopers’ brains reply below high-stress battlefield situations.
Inside Torch Technologies’ simulation lab at FISTA, college students and researchers are recreating battlefield environments and monitoring mind responses in actual time. The program examines soldier cognitive workload, from response time to choice making, and explores how know-how and automation may help in essential moments.
Soldier-centered design strategy
Bill Mink, director at Torch Technologies, stated the company operates the Soldier Touch Point Research Center at FISTA.
“This gives us an opportunity to get soldiers in to our lab to show them our products, get their firsthand experience, understand what works, what doesn’t, enable soldier centered design so we can build what the soldier needs, not what the engineer thinks he needs,” Mink stated.
Torch Technologies works alongside OSU school, college students and lively responsibility troopers to analyze performance in lifelike situations. Researchers are combining human elements, engineering, psychological knowledge and machine studying to perceive how individuals function below stress and the place know-how can help.
Real-time cognitive evaluation
Dr. Katie Jurewicz, assistant professor in OSU’s School of Industrial Engineering and Management, stated the workforce is conducting real-time evaluation utilizing a number of knowledge metrics.
“We’re looking at EEG, FNIRS, heart rate, we’re looking at respiration rate, the activities that we’re doing to see how can we measure cognitive workload,” Jurewicz stated. “And look at the design of their systems to see…are the designs of the Torch test beds actually reducing that cognitive workload to support the soldier in the field?”
The collaboration supplies perception into the human factor of fight, serving to form programs and outcomes for these on the battlefield.
Jurewicz stated the workforce needs to increase this system past industrial engineering.
“We want to expand not just on our side and looking at how industrial engineering and mechanical and aerospace engineering can do more, but also how this expands across all of engineering, all of OSU, to see how we can partner with other companies at the FISTA,” Jurewicz stated.
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