Volume 4, Number 2 May/June 1996
A software program developed for researchers to evaluate the physiological and behavioral effects of flight systems on pilots has been adapted to become part of a system that will help educators communicate with severely disabled students. NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, teamed with Deaton Ashcraft Group (DAG) of Dayton, Ohio, to design a system to record and analyze how these students react to their environments and how they communicate their thoughts to those surrounding them.
The Montgomery County (Ohio) Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities asked DAG to find a way to objectively measure what information their disabled students are gaining from their environment so an educational curriculum could be designed for them.
DAG contacted the National Technology Transfer Center (NTTC) at Wheeling Jesuit College, Wheeling, West Virginia, which referred the engineering consulting and product development firm to several federal laboratories working in this area. DAG decided NASA Langley's CREW technology most fit its needs, and the two entitites signed a memorandum of agreement to work together in October 1995.
The system is based on Langley's Crew Response Evaluation Window (CREW) software which was developed to consolidate several human response monitoring technologies into one computer display window. An evaluator may select and simultaneously view responses to tests involving eye-tracking, physiological stress and brainwave signal processing while monitoring a pilot in a flight simulator.
The CREW software is designed to either be on-line with the flight simulator to measure the responses as they are occurring or off-line so that videotaped recordings of the responses during the simulation may be analyzed.
"Past monitoring efforts involved only observing the external responses of the youths to stimuli," said Tim Birt, rehabilitation engineer for DAG. "The CREW software will allow those working on the project to measure the children's degree of alertness and whether or not they are trying to communicate via their physical and bio-behavioral states," Birt said.
Langley is providing DAG with its expertise and the hardware and software equipment the company needs to operate CREW as DAG develops a system that combines the CREW software, biotelemetry physiological monitoring equipment, video equipment and computer technology to measure the reactions of the students.
The results garnered from the product Langley and DAG are designing eventually may have implications for others with severe disabilities such as those with traumatic brain injuries, cerebral vascular diseases and other low-cognitive functioning individuals.
"Langley has a high degree of confidence that DAG has the expertise and capabilities to successfully adapt the CREW technology to assist people with disabilities. This collaboration is one example of how NASA Langley broadens the utilization of its technologies developed for aeronautics to the American industrial community," said Marisol Romero, technologist in the Technology Applications Group at Langley.
For more information, contact Marisol Romero at Langley Research Center. Phone: 804/864-5355, E-mail: m.e.romero@larc.nasa.gov Please mention that you read about it in Innovation.
