Operational Military Networked Individual Tracking in Residential Area Confines

To address the U.S. Army need for a soldier training tracking system for local positioning within a complex urban environment, including in and around buildings of all sizes and types, including wood, metal, stone, and brick, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop the new Operational Military Networked Individual Tracking in Residential Area Confines (OMNITRAC) system. OMNITRAC is based on an innovative design integrating GPS, a MEMS INS, and an RFID communicating over a low-power ZigBee self-organizing wireless mesh network to specifically address the U.S. Army need to track a virtually unlimited number of soldiers in a complex urban environment. In addition to tracking the location of each soldier, OMNITRAC will track the direction each soldier’s weapon is pointed at all times, enabling remote personnel monitoring to assess tactical threat reaction and individual and group risk response in real time. In Phase I POC will demonstrate the feasibility of OMNITRAC by developing a working prototype that will track a test subject’s location and weapon pose in a simulated MOUT environment and show it via a GUI. In Phase II POC plans to develop a complete system, including simultaneous real-time tracking of multiple targets over a self-configuring wireless mesh network.