Continuous Monitoring of Recruits During Military Basic Training to Mitigate Attrition

Abstract

This paper explores the use of wearable technology (Garmin Fenix 7) to monitor physiological and psychological factors contributing to attrition during basic military training. Attrition, or the voluntary departure of recruits from the military, often results from physical and psychological challenges, such as fatigue, injury, and stress, which lead to significant costs for the military. To better understand and mitigate attrition, we designed and implemented a comprehensive and continuous data-capturing methodology to monitor 63 recruits during their basic infantry training. It’s optimized for military use by being minimally invasive (for both recruits and operators), preventing data leakage, and being built for scale. We analysed data collected from two test phases, focusing on seven key psychometric and physical features derived from baseline questionnaires and physiological measurements from wearable devices. The preliminary results revealed that recruits at risk of attrition tend to cluster in specific areas of the feature space in both Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Key indicators of attrition included low motivation, low resilience, and a stress mindset. Furthermore, we developed a predictive model using physiological data, such as sleep scores and step counts from Garmin devices, achieving a macro mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.74. This model suggests the potential to reduce the burden of daily wellness questionnaires by relying on continuous, unobtrusive monitoring.