Vehicle survivability is an important issue in today’s military, especially considering that Soldiers frequently perform sustained military operations for extended periods and often with fractionated or no sleep. It is well-established that fatigue, whether due to acute or chronic sleep deprivation, extended time-on-task or the interaction between sleep- and task-related factors, is associated with neurocognitive performance decrements across a broad range of perceptual, cognitive and motor functions. Recent analyses have revealed that motor vehicle crashes account for nearly one-third of U.S. military fatalities annually, making motor vehicle accidents the leading cause of fatalities among U.S. military personnel. Although fatigue management technologies have been developed to monitor and mitigate driver performance decrements and have the capability to improve driver safety and survivability, there exists no gold standard system or set of design criteria for the development and implementation of fatigue management technologies (FMTs). Therefore, the objectives of this report are to review currently available and emerging FMTs and to identify potential solutions for near-term integration of existing technologies into active safety technology programs for military vehicles. The report also discusses emerging technologies and future research needs required to advance the current state of the art fatigue management technologies. (Author/publisher)
Abstract