With the Army getting ready to see the first demonstrations of its future augmented reality headset this month, officials said Monday the service is looking for a capability required to analyze data collected by the new training and simulation tool.
The Army will release Request for White Papers to gather industry input on providing a Tactical Integration Center (TIC) Capability prototype for the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS).
“The overall goal of the IVAS TIC [prototype] is to develop a Command, Control, Computers and Communications system that can analyze both technical integration and user experience of the IVAS,” officials wrote in the notice.
Microsoft [MSFT] previously received a $479 million contract to develop IIVAS, and senior leadership is set to see the first prototypes and receive a demonstration of the new technology this month.
Officials are prepared to ask industry to describe three subsystems for the IVAS TIC capable of processing the increasingly large amounts of training data expected to be gathered by the new headset.
The subsystems include an information visualization system, a Controlled Mission Area sensing system and a Dynamic Mission Site to monitor and sense IVAS performance.
“Each IVAS TIC IOC prototype subsystem will consist of an array of computing, electronics, software, network, and sensing components to assess and visualize both squad operations and IVAS technical performance along the domains of technical integration and soldier acceptance,” officials wrote in the notice.
Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy in March called IVAS a top priority for the Army as the service looks to deliver a new headset to soldiers that is capable of placing units in simulated training environments.
“We’re very excited about this because it brings such enormous amount of capability to soldiers. You’ll have a pair of goggles, and it will be day and night sight. You can put an interface in there. We can pump synthetic training into there, so you can do practice. But it’s the same device they’re going to use in combat,” McCarthy said. “But the most exciting part about it is that we’re going to capture performance data on soldiers. We’re going to see what was their heart rate going through that door, their marksmanship, what were they looking at.”
The project has received pushback from Microsoft [MSFT] employees who argue the project is taking existing technology, the HoloLens augmented reality headset, and developing it into a weapon.
The Sensors, Communications, and Electronics Consortium is set to lead the TIC prototype effort for IVAS.