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JANUARY 30, 2004
A Sensor That Knows How You Feel... ...And can tell you -- or your boss -- when you're getting too tired to function effectively, coming soon from Sandia Labs A firefighter who has been battling a five-alarm blaze is starting to feel fatigued when suddenly, a gentle voice whispers in his ear, "Hey, buddy, maybe it's time to take a break." Or imagine a group of people working hours on end to resolve an ongoing crisis, such as a blackout or an evacuation. Someone starts to fade until they hear: "Wake up -- or I'll tell the boss." Hallucinations? Science fiction? Hardly. Sandia National Laboratories has developed a prototype of a computer system that can monitor your heart rate, pulse, temperature, and gestures. Tiny sensors and transmitters, dangling from a wrist or a helmet, would collect information about your well-being and send it to a database where it can be analyzed and then instantaneously fed back to you via computer voice-reader. The system might even go a step further -- alerting the firefighter's supervisor that he's overtired and needs a break, for example. Sandia believes the first applications of this new monitoring technology could be in military and national security use in three to five years. Then it could make its way into hospital emergency rooms, or even onto Wall Street trading floors. The idea is to help groups work more effectively and reach better decisions, says Peter Merkle, who's in charge of this project at Sandia. But it sounds like this best friend could also be a Big Brother. How does it work? What about privacy issues? And it is likely to ever end up monitoring you at work? Merkle answered these and other questions in a conversation with BusinessWeek Online Reporter Olga Kharif on Jan. 26. Edited excerpts of the interview follow: Q: So, can you explain how this system would work? A: Everyone will have what we call a Pal, a device with which you control what kind of information the group knows about you. The information that you allow to be shared goes into a system we call Mentor. During a meeting, Mentor will develop a performance map of you and your behavior, and link you to people in your group. Let's look at the possibility that there's a combat station somewhere across the world, with a 12-hour time difference from the command center back in the U.S. This system could help the commander to understand more about the people who are on the front lines: their stress level, degree of fatigue, or excitement about something. That may influence the leader's decisions regarding assignments and other things. Q: O.K., but what's the value of this technology in situations when all of the discussion participants are in the same room? A: If the leader is able to tell naturally if someone is fatigued, or distracted, or doing very well that day and should be given additional responsibility, we're all for that. But we'd like to develop systems that can support people who maybe don't have the abilities that natural leaders do -- or that can enable someone to be even a better leader than they were before. Q: People in a group situation are already getting so much information just from observing and listening. And in an emergency situation, people have to focus on safety and being able to make split-second decisions. Are you worried that this additional data will be an overload? A: Our goal is not to overwhelm the participants with information about other people. We're aiming for a technology that's not invasive. Perhaps it's going to be a gentle voice whispering in your ear at appropriate times. Or a visual cue that would tell the team leader that somebody is under a lot of stress. We think this sort of technology has to be something that grows along with a specific group. They should be able to learn from it and customize it so at the end, you wouldn't be able to separate the technology from the group. For instance, some people enter into an activity in an alert state, and as they do the activity, they become more relaxed. For others, the reverse is true. So the software that's behind the sensors, attached to your wrist or your helmet, would learn about these behaviors and adjust accordingly to make sure the group as a whole works efficiently. Q: Many people would resent being monitored, no? How do you overcome privacy concerns? A: In a national-security environment, where this technology will first become available in three to five years, you have teams of people who have voluntarily given up a lot of what we call personal privacy for the good of the team and service to others. With a lot of teams, there's an implicit agreement that a lot of your privacy is given up for the good of the group. The medical condition of a person on a Special Forces team is really the business of the whole team and the team leader. If you go out on a mission and you know that your knee is hurt but you don't tell anybody, that's a very dangerous thing, because other people's lives may depend upon you. This system could notice that your temperature becomes elevated or your pulse is quickening [as you're fighting pain] -- and alert the appropriate people. Q: And what about the business world? A: We imagine this technology will be very helpful in a fast-paced environment like the stock-trading floor, where people [need] real-time information and work for high stakes and as a team. If personal-awareness technology helps people to perform better in those settings, financial concerns might override privacy concerns. Q: What kinds of other commercial applications do you foresee for this technology? A: You end up with a list that includes all of the dimensions of our life. You've got markets and trading, commerce decisions, public-service decisions regarding the power grid and other infrastructure, and so on. Q: O.K., but back to your average conference room? A: While I see this being most useful in high-stress situations, this could be something that could help in many organizations' brainstorming sessions. In a group meeting, sometimes a few people crowd out others who might be less assertive...[so] the Pal of the person talking too much could alert that person to that.  Edited by Patricia O'Connell
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