Human and Warfighter Performance

Combat readiness, retention on duty, and rapid return to service post-injury are three essential pillars that support U.S. military capabilities and lethality while ensuring overmatch against adversarial forces. Although non-life-threatening, musculoskeletal (MSK) injuries – whether they are incurred during physical training, tactical training, forward deployed, or recreational activities – are the leading cause of military disability discharge and degrade force readiness. The prevalence of MSK injuries in the civilian sector - specifically athletes - is just as common if not more. 

The vision is to engineer an individualized “Digital Twin” that enables vastly improved personal MSK health management. The “Human Twin” and its Digital Twin would constitute a mutually interacting cyber-physical-human system to assess and mitigate MSK injury risks, with the goals of maximizing warfighter performance, minimizing risk of injuries, and enabling rapid and active rehabilitation (for those recovering from MSK injuries). The development of the Human Digital Twin for MSK health, however, requires sensing streams beyond the current physiological, biometric, biochemical, and vital sign measurements. To address this technology gap, the ARMOR Lab is developing field-deployable or wearable medical imaging and movement/muscle engagement monitoring sensors that provide densely distributed information about the human body. The various active and completed projects below highlight some of our efforts in advancing the state-of-the-art in wearable systems and the broader area of human performance.