MEDULLA: Monitoring Emergent Duress Under Long-Lasting Allostasis

MEDULLA is a Phase 2 SBIR funded by DARPA under Contract #W31P4Q-19-C-0068. The goal of the project is to understand collective allostatic load of small teams in extreme and isolated environments. Our cross-disciplinary approach involves the collection and analysis of social, cognitive, behavioral and physiological measures and utilization of Machine Learning algorithms to better understand and predict behavioral and performance outcomes of small teams. To achieve this goal SIFT is collaborating with Blue Planet Research, the Navy Health Research Center and Ketone Technologies to run four high-tempo lunar surface simulation studies at the HI-SEAS habitat in Hawaii (see images below).

 

SIFT, together with our collaborators at the International MoonBase Alliance (IMA), conducted four 28-day missions in the Fall of 2021 and Spring of 2022 that simulated lunar surface operations. Selected participants worked and lived together as a mixed gender crew of 6 at the HI-SEAS habitat on the main island of Hawaii. Participation included a 4-day training period, 28-day in-mission period, and 1-day of post-mission procedures. Over the course of these missions we gathered almost 200GB of data, including continuous physiological monitoring with an Empatica E4 wristband, daily performance tasks and surveys, weekly surveys, and weekly biometric samples. We are currently in the process of analyzing this data under our OBLONGATA program.

 

As part of this project, SIFT has developed a VR game (“CubeCrusher”) which functions as a social and performance sensor for team collaboration. Please contact the PI Sonja Schmer-Galunder about any questions: sgalunder@sift.net.