Practice Tests
During the month of July, UPM and SERMAS performed a set of practice tests for Cognitive Load Balance at the NationalSchoolOfCivilProtection in Madrid, Spain. These tests are the first field trials for testing all the tools developed in “T7.2: Biosignals monitoring & Cognitive load balancing” under “WP7: Health and cognitive monitoring and support” at RESCUER project.
The tools developed by UNIWA, VICOM, SERMAS and UPM intend to provide FRs with specialized monitoring systems to track health status and to prevent excessive cognitive load. Inferring Cognitive Load Balance (CLB) in real time situations is not trivial, so first tests are devoted to understand how biosignals are affected under a different CLB in real situations.
In these first field tests, we selected a total of 20 first responders (doctors, nurses, technicians and firefighters). They performed two different multi-objective tasks in a collapsing structure field. The first test was related to visual attention; to remember and find different images with shapes and colours while navigating in a crushed and tilted bus. The second test focused on hearing acuity and math skills while crawling through a narrow tunnel.
As in the first in-lab tests held in June, we recorded biosignals from the users performing the tests; specifically, Heart Rate, Galvanic Skin Response, Body Temperature, Eye Gaze, Respiration and Masseter EMG activation. Moreover, for each task, users were asked to fill up a NASA TLX test about the complexity of the task and its subjective CLB.
During the following months, we will be analysing the extracted data, and we expect to come back with exciting results.
