Lightweight Personal Protective Head Gear Communication System for the Dismounted Soldier

The overall objective of the Phase II effort is to improve the Army aviator's ability to perform night missions by developing innovative symbols that capitalize on the advantages of new wide-field of view (WFOV) helmet-mounted displays (HMDs). We willbuild upon the successes of the Phase I effort, in which we identified more than 100 valuable new symbols through mission analyses, developed the symbols with our logical, systematic procedures, and evaluated a subset of them with our powerful flightsimulator and a state-of-the art WFOV HMD.We will now greatly extend the symbology set based on new information sources such as GPS, satellite communications, and data link, and on information requirements from additional Army mission scenarios. We will develop and test the additional symbols,implementing fully functional symbology sets in our flight simulator, with the participation of expert Army pilots in realistic tactical missions, and objectively measure mission task performance differences based on the presence of these symbols. We willdeliver detailed descriptions of the most promising symbology elements, including all drive functions and input requirements, as well as software to support flight testing of the symbology set on actual aircraft.