Rapid Acclimation to Vision Augmentation to Greatly Enhance Visual Range (RAVAGER)

Human vision provides a sensory system limited to roughly a 120-degree field of view (FOV); however, warfighters must operate in a 360-degree world. Thus, any potential threat or opportunity outside the normal forward-facing FOV is not immediately visible by the warfighter. Providing a 360-degree FOV of their surroundings would dramatically enhance situation awareness, however, there is a need to first identify methods to enable and then validate that warfighters can in fact acclimate to such an augmented FOV. To address this need, Charles River Analytics proposes to design, prototype, and conduct initial validation of a system for Rapid Acclimation to Vision Augmentation to Greatly Enhance Visual Range (RAVAGER). RAVAGER supports initial, empirical exploration and validation of mechanisms to facilitate acclimation into and out of an augmented FOV. It uses gaze tracking to apply augmentations while ensuring no distortion is present that would inhibit focal vision. Under the proposed Phase I effort, we will demonstrate that it is feasible for individuals to acclimate, both perceptually and cognitively, to this type of augmented FOV, setting the stage for a Phase II effort focused on empirical validation and extensions to provide additional FOV enhancements (e.g., overlaid HUD symbologies) to promote the enhanced SA.