Harsh Environments

The purpose of this set of projects is to develop techniques for learning human behavior in an office or a social situation. Projects include learning both human control and interactive behaviors. We want to build machines that understand person's intentions by the set of subtle queues and patterns of his regular behavior. This will help to seamlessly integrate computers into our everyday lives.

Army Rangers and other soldiers must perform physically and mentally demanding tasks under challenging environmental conditions ranging from extreme heat to extreme cold. Thermoregulation, or the maintenance of core body temperature within a functional range, is critical to sustained performance. This project attempts to study the affects of harsh environments on soldier physiology through the use of non-invasive sensing. Our pilot study involves using non-invasive accelerometer sensing to determine hypothermia and cold exposure state, as part of a broader initiative to develop a physiologic monitoring device for soldiers under the US. Army's Objective Force Warrior Program. This project is a joint research collaboration with the Army Research Institute for Environmental Medicine (ARIEM ) at the Army Natick Labs.