There are 4.6 million people who serve as career or volunteer firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians, and paramedics in the United States. Emergency responders perform extremely demanding tasks in complex, stressful, and hazardous environments. One responder is lost in the line of duty every two days.
A team of researchers from Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering, Texas A&M University, and the University of Florida are actively working to improve the safety of these responders while enhancing their performance and quality of life with human augmentation technology.
The team is in the process of developing a learning platform called Learning Environments with Augmentation and Robotics for Next-gen Emergency Responders (LEARNER). The platform is a mixed reality, cloud-based system that will be used to train emergency responders on how to use human augmentation technologies, including augmented reality and exoskeletons, in the field.
By doing so, trained emergency responders will be able to boost their cognitive and physical capabilities while decreasing their risk for personal injury or loss in the line of duty.
To learn more, check out the whole article below.