SBIR-STTR Award

HEAR, LLC will design, develop and test a Portable Auditory Situation Awareness Training system (PASAT) for training Auditory Situation Awareness (ASA) recognition/identification and localization skills in military personnel. PASAT, using a menu-based computer interface, will enable user-friendly setup, calibration, and operation by either trainer or trainee, and provide performance feedback during training exercises on accuracy and response time metrics. Using custom LabVIEW software, training will be enabled with both open ear and various HPDs and TCAPS, with on-screen comparison of results. A computerized automatic gain control innovation will maintain one of at least 3 preselected signal/masking-noise ratios sufficiently above ambient noise encountered in training environments. Options for various military-relevant, pre-calibrated WAV files of signals and noises will be selectable by the trainer/trainee. PASAT will include a 15-degree arcuate separation between signal speakers in azimuth/elevation, with speaker array mounted on a collapsible, portable halo-style frame. Phase I includes a subcontract to Virginia Tech's Auditory Systems Lab to enable its full-scale DRILCOM ASA test system to be used as a springboard resource. The Principal Investigators have extensive experience with ASA testing/training, having pioneered objective measurement of ASA performance in 2007, and thereafter developed instrumentation/protocols for its laboratory measurement and trainee skills acquisition.

Benefit:
Functional Need and Benefits. The functional need is acute for an efficient, portable Auditory Situation Awareness training tool (PASAT) for instilling auditory recognition/identification and localization skills in military personnel as well as civilian workers in certain dynamic environments. Research at Virginia Tech has clearly demonstrated that: 1) most electronic HPDs and TCAPS that are militarily-deployed significantly compromise at least one aspect of the wearer's ASA performance, and 2) that the skills of ASA, with open ear and with some TCAPS, can be acquired and improved via structured training using proper instrumentation and protocol. Thus, the functional need for PASAT is to ensure that all military personnel who rely on HPDs or TCAPS are fully prepared, via training, to deploy with evidence-based confidence about their ASA performance when depending upon their devices in dangerous situations. The forecasted

Keywords:
TCAPs, TCAPs, auditory performance, recognition and identification, auditory training, Hearing Protection, DRILCOM, Auditory Situation Awareness, localization

This Phase II project will refine and validate HEAR LLC's extant prototype Portable Auditory Situation Awareness Training system (PASAT) as a tool for training military personnel and workers to localize and recognize-identify auditory signals. PASAT will double as a means for assessing the effects of hearing protection devices (HPDs) and Tactical-Communications-and-Protective-Systems (TCAPS) on wearers' auditory situation awareness, including the training burden imposed by these devices. PASAT will be optimized for deployment by trainees in office or barracks environments. Human factors usability analysis/experimentation will be applied toward PASAT interface optimization, and a trainee-trainer user manual and instructional video will be developed. In-laboratory and in-field experimentation will be applied to ascertain training benefits, including transfer-of-training to the field environment. After PASAT has been evaluated and optimized, it will be reproduced and distributed to Navy training sites for the U.S. Marines, SEALS and ground warfighters of other military branches, as well to an civilian industrial-construction site, for beta testing. The ultimate objective for PASAT is to provide a beneficial testing and training tool for instilling auditory situation awareness skills with the open ear and HPDs and TCAPS, offering a mission-critical capability which does not currently exist in the military or in civilian industry.