Psychological health monitoring for pilots and astronauts by tracking sleep-stress-emotion changes

Janet Meiling Roveda, Wolfgang Fink, Kemeng Chen, Wo Tak Wu

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

The effects of stress on human behavior and performance have been well recognized. However, little has been investigated on the impact of psychological stress on pilots and astronauts. Living a life of constantly altered sleeping hours, pilots or astronauts are experiencing sleep stage fragments or long working hours with little or no sleep. The relationship between sleep and stress is reciprocal. Studies have shown that even in low-stress conditions, sleep-deprived participants demonstrate anger and anxiety a lot more frequently than participants with normal sleep quality and hours. In this paper, we introduce a new psychological health-monitoring framework. The prognostics sensors include Actiwatch for sleep monitoring, BioPatch from Zephyr to collect electrocardiogram (ECG) for heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) for emotion changing monitoring. In this paper, a new Sleep-HRV-Emotion analytical model is proposed to assess the risk of emotion changes in real time. Prognostics analysis and prediction of psychological health is performed based on the proposed new model. Based on the output of the prognostics analysis, several stress intervention strategies are suggested both for the general public as well as for pilots and astronauts in particular. These interventions include the time to rest/sleep, hours of sleep, ultrasound pulses, and Yoga breathing. As such, these intervention strategies help recover, preserve, or improve pilot and astronaut performance, especially during long-duration space flights, and, ultimately, human settlement on other planetary bodies.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2016 IEEE Aerospace Conference, AERO 2016
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
ISBN (Electronic)9781467376761
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 27 2016
Event2016 IEEE Aerospace Conference, AERO 2016 - Big Sky, United States
Duration: Mar 5 2016Mar 12 2016

Publication series

NameIEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings
Volume2016-June
ISSN (Print)1095-323X

Other

Other2016 IEEE Aerospace Conference, AERO 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBig Sky
Period3/5/163/12/16

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Space and Planetary Science

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