Augmented reality meets military service
U.S. Army outfits soldiers with “Tactical Augmented Reality” headsets that give situational awareness on the battlefield.
“Call of Duty” is about to get real…
U.S. Army is deploying a new augmented reality heads-up display technology that makes modern warfare feel like a first person video shooter.
Dubbed as “Tactical Augmented Reality” (TAR), this novel heads-up display overlays tactical mapping to locate the positions of friends and foes in a military operation.
Designed for both day and night, the display is also used as a targeting system. It can be connected wirelessly to a tablet that soldiers wear on their waist and to a thermal site mounted on their rifle or carbine.
According to Army News Service, Staff Sgt. Ronald Geer, a counterterrorism non-commissioned officer at CERDEC’s (United States Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center) Night Vision and Electronics Sensors Directorate, said that with TAR, soldiers don’t have to look down at their GPS device.
“They no longer need a separate GPS device because with TAR, the image is in the eyepiece, which is mounted to the Soldier’s helmet in the same way NGV (Night Vision Google) is mounted.”
Military industry has been working on miniature displays since 2008
David Fellowes, an electronics engineer at CERDEC, said that the key technological breakthrough was miniaturizing the image to fit into the tiny one-inch-by-one-inch eyepiece.
According to Fellowes, since about 2008, CERDEC, the Army Research Laboratory and industry have been working to make this miniaturization happen.
By about 2010, the image was compressed enough to be shown in black and white, as well as a greenish monochrome version, Fellowes said.
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