Augmented Reality Training for Dismounted Soldiers

Currently, live training is limited in realism because of costs (e.g., roleplayer manpower, upkeep of MOUTs), safety (e.g., restricted use of battlefield effects), logistics (e.g., unavailability of combined arms assets), and/or local laws (e.g., restricted airspace for aircraft). This project combines low-cost COTS augmented reality (AR) technologies together to overcome these challenges, to vastly increase realism in live training. Through the use of the latest head mounted displays (HMD), 6 DoF occlusion/interference-resistant motion tracking devices, wide-range depth sensing cameras, and minor weapon modifications, a system can be built that is unencumbering to Soldiers and can scale to a platoon level without any self-interference due to energy emissions (e.g., infrared light, wireless communications). The system can operate in various weather conditions, day or night.These COTS AR technologies actively correlate the live world with a virtual worldinsomuch that virtual entities (e.g., OPFOR, IEDs) are naturally embedded visually, acoustically, and haptically. Soldiers are completely untethered and can maneuver in unlimited 3-dimensional space while maintaining localization and 6 DoF body part and weapon tracking to millimeter/sub-millimeter accuracy to provide realistic static and dynamic occlusion from any perspective of live or virtual assets.