SBIR-STTR Award

Spatial disorientation errors in pilots of both civilian and military persuasion have plagued aviation for over 100 years. This persistence suggests that the disruption of a subconscious orientational system might be partially at fault, influencing pilot decisions that lead to these often-fatal errors. Our collaborators at Caltech recently discovered that alpha waves in the human brain respond strongly to small shifts in the background geomagnetic field, indicating that humans likely have a geomagnetic sensory modality comparable to that of homing and migratory animals. In many migratory species, such as migratory birds, geomagnetic sensory responses can disappear or are profoundly altered in the presence of weak Radio-Frequency (RF) signals (e.g. AM / FM radio transmissions, aircraft navigation, and many forms of RF based communication). In this Phase I proposal, we seek to quantify the RF fields that are present in the cockpit environment of military and civilian aircrafts. We will compare this information with the RF fields known to affect the geomagnetic sensory systems of animals. This will lead to direct tests on human subjects in Phase II, as well as the development of electronic countermeasures that could be exploited commercially for testing and mitigation of such effects.

It is unknown how cockpit EM and RF exposures might affect pilot performance and physiology. Animal, human, and physics research indicate that a pathway for such exposures to impact human physiology exists via aggregations of magnetite, a ferromagnetic nanocrystal. Aggregations of magnetite have been found in many animal tissues, including in the human brain; they have been linked to magnetoreception, the ability of organisms to navigate by the geomagnetic field; and they have been found to readily absorb RF energy. In Phase II, we continue the development and use of sensors to record cockpit EM and RF exposures during prescribed flight patterns performed at OPL. We augment the human test facilities at Caltech to create exposures extracted from the recordings, and to administer the flight patterns as flight simulator tasks. We also continue the development of models and simulations of magnetite biophysics, to examine how the cockpit exposures result in energy absorption and conversion. This may lead to the development of passive and/or electronic countermeasures that could be exploited commercially for testing and mitigation of exposure effects.