NASA SBIR 2008 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Horizon Performance
121 Edinburgh S. Dr., Suite 214
Cary, NC 27511 - 6448
(919) 674-6644

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
John Thompson
jat@horizonperformance.com
121 Edinburgh S. Dr., Suite 214
Cary, NC 27511 - 6448
(919) 674-6644

Expected Technology Readiness Level (TRL) upon completion of contract: 3 to 4

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
This Company is proposing to adapt a behavioral tracking program and feedback module specifically developed for the U.S. Army Special Forces for NASA human space exploration. To achieve this, this Company has developed a plan to identify the specific technical requirements needed to modify the software to properly operate with the NASA space program. This will include ensuring the software is unobtrusive, transparent to crews, requires minimal effort, and is compatible with NASA's current computing environment. Additionally, this Company intends to use a rigorous and methodical approach for identifying specific behavioral patterns that would indicate possible crewmember health issues. The current software product is designed to monitor a soldier's behavior in austere conditions relevant to the Special Forces Operating Environment. This project is proposing to enhance the current software's capabilities by redesigning the software to monitor behavior for NASA, accept and assimilate feeds from other software (e.g., biometric information), develop feedback tools, and generate customized reports to give flight surgeons pertinent information for making informed decisions about a crewmember's health.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
This software would be designed to monitor flight crew behavior for the purpose of identifying potential health issues and possibly other areas of interest, like team cohesion. The software would provide a framework for NASA personnel to monitor and assess target behaviors demonstrated by the flight crew. Each behavior would be stored in the software database where reports could be generated that depicts patterns of behavior. Furthermore, these behaviors could be linked to video feeds via timestamps giving flight surgeons the capability of reviewing specific footage of tagged behaviors. This would allow flight surgeons to not only identify possible behavioral patterns but also view the context in which these behaviors occurred. This software could further link other information, like biometric data, to the behaviors. For example: A behavioral report may indicate that a crew member appeared agitated at a specific time period. The flight surgeon would be able to view video footage at that specific point in time along with the crew member's heart rate.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
One additional application of this software would be to assist the U.S. military with personnel suffering with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Specifically, this software could be used to monitor at risk personnel by monitoring their behavior and notifying medical staff of possible PTSD candidates. This could be achieved by providing at risk personnel with a handheld device that family members could use to identify specific behaviors when they occur. For example: the spouse could mark when her husband had a panic attack and how long the attack lasted. This information would be time stamped and sent back to a central database where it would be stored and used to monitor and assess behavioral patterns. Furthermore, the at-risk military personnel could use this software to answer questions daily to gauge their health, which would also be immediately delivered to the database. The software system could modify the questions asked of personnel based on their behaviors and responses to previous questions. The system could then notify medical staff of personnel that are showing signs of PTSD. Similarly, hospitals could use the same software to monitor outpatient recovery by allowing patients to assess their condition throughout the recovery process. All assessments would be collected in a database that would monitor patient recovery based on assessment patterns and notify medical staff of possible recovery issues.

NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING

Computer System Architectures Data Input/Output Devices Database Development and Interfacing Human-Computer Interfaces Portable Data Acquisition or Analysis Tools Software Development Environments