Minimalist Operator Tactile Alerting for Universal Reconnaissance (MINOTAUR)

Pison is the developer of the Vulcan Control Band, a wrist-worn sensor that monitors biopotential activity on the top of the wrist and IMU motions of the arm to define gestures. These gestures provide a human-machine interface (HMI) for interacting with electronic systems. This gesture control wearable enables users to intuitively interact with third-party systems in contexts that would previously be prohibitive (e.g., wearing PPE, holding a weapon). For Defense and Non-Defense stakeholders, a shortcoming of Vulcan is the limitation of its current haptic feedback loop. Based on the success of a Phase I effort, Pison is pursuing a Phase II effort to validate a complementary wearable for Minimalist Operator Tactile Alerting for Universal Reconnaissance (MINOTAUR). MINOTAUR offers resolved haptic feedback to close the gesture control loop that Vulcan affords. Specifically, Phase II will focus on design and fabrication of the prototype MINOTAUR wrist-worn tactile cueing strap that provides multi-haptic communications encoding position and classification information of geospatial points of interest, waypoints, and threats. This allows preservation of visual and auditory sensory channels, while bolstering situational awareness and, as a result, survivability and lethality. This technology will be empirically validated under ecologically relevant conditions for both dismounted and mounted warfighters.