Augmented Reality Maintenance System (ARMS) for Complex Military Assets

Currently, equipment maintenance requires highly trained individuals and is labor intensive, expensive and inefficient. The Marine Corps and DoD use written technical manuals and Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals (IETM) to direct technicians through complex maintenance procedures for land vehicles, radar systems, radio communications systems, and ground-based weapon systems. Recently, the internet has made it possible to retrieve relevant maintenance data more quickly using computer search programs. However, technical documents are still time consuming to locate, tedious to use, and require substantial training to extract the appropriate data. Maintenance of complex equipment would greatly benefit from an intelligent, interactive system to reduce maintainer demands, speed maintenance, and improve repair quality. RMD, in collaboration with Dr. Steven Feiner (Columbia University), proposes a revolutionary new technology for equipment maintenance based on the fusion of Augmented Reality (AR) and Cognitive Augmentation (CA). The augmented reality maintenance system (ARMS) will guide the maintainer through complex maintenance procedures, from the identification of defective components to the detailed repair methodology. ARMS will be graphics intensive and interactive making it simple and highly intuitive to use. It will augment the abilities of the technician by providing the type of guidance normally associated with an expert human trainer.