Cadets and faculty from the Department of Systems Engineering (DSE) and Department of Physical Education (DPE) participated in a meeting hosted at the Natick Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center with members of the Soldier systems research community. DSE and DPE delivered FY17 study plan briefings describing efforts to better understand the effects of load on dismounted Soldiers. PEO Soldier plans to deliver a Load Effects Assessment Program - Army (LEAP-A) system to USMA for use during the fall semester. LEAP-A is an instrumented obstacle course designed to mimic likely physical tasks in combat to include tunnel crawling, window entries, wall climbs, and casualty drags. The DPE experiment, led by Dr. Jennifer Hewit and Dr. Daniel Jaffe, will use LEAP-A to assess the impact of various load configurations on Soldier task performance. The DSE cadet capstone team (Cadets Robertson, Pattillo, Ross, and Murray) will research load effects measurement methodologies and propose improvements, both inclusive and exclusive of the LEAP-A. The client for this study, PEO Soldier, ultimately needs a better understanding of load limits and an assessment methodology capable of supporting current and future materiel acquisition decisions.
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