SBIR-STTR Award

PEAT is an advanced cognitive aid which uses NASA's autonomous planning and control methods to compensate for cognitive impairments due to brain injury, stroke and other disorders. The system is used by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to help Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) veterans with brain injury. PEAT assists users with planning and execution of daily activities, monitors progress and replans when changes occur. PEAT’s monitoring relies on users to self-report progress by pressing Start and Stop buttons, which has obvious limitations. We propose to solve this problem by adding advanced sensor and activity monitoring methods. Sensors will track user location, objects they grasp, and other state properties. We will integrate PEAT running on a cellphone with GPS, experimental RFID reader bracelets, and advanced cognitive sensory interpretation methods developed by Co-Investigator Henry Kautz. This will provide more reliable monitoring, more flexible plans, less intrusive cueing, and assistance that currently requires a caregiver. Our Advisory Board of brain injury experts from the VA, California Department of Rehabilitation, and a county hospital, are all PEAT customers who will provide guidance about clinical and commercial considerations.

Keywords:
Cognitive Aid, Sensing, Planning, Cueing, Rfid, Gps, Autonomous, Cellphone

Our objective is to demonstrate the feasibility and merit of a cognitive aid that monitors the user"s situation to provide cues based on state conditions instead of pre-scheduled cues which are based only on time. We extend a commercially available cognitive aid to use condition-based cues which are responsive to the user"s changing situation. Context-aware cognitive aids which adjust to the user"s situation in real-time may increase therapy effectiveness and user acceptance. During Phase I we developed a prototype of the first cognitive aid that "closes-the-loop" with integrated sensing, activity recognition, planning, and cueing. The user"s location is tracked using GPS and pressure mats and RFID tags are used to detect objects that the user touches. We demonstrated the ability to inhibit pre-scheduled cues which would be out of sync with the user"s situation and to generate contingent cues which are triggered by monitored state conditions rather than being pre-scheduled. We demonstrated these benefits to our medical advisory board which includes VA neuropsychologists. Phase II will focus on extending our prototype and evaluating the system with seven brain injury survivors including case studies with OIF/OEF veterans. We will focus on requirements for scaling beyond our prototype to a commercial product.

Keywords:
Brain Injury, Cognitive Aid, Sensors, Gps, Rfid, Planning, Cueing, Executive Functions