AUSA NEWS: Honeywell Debuts Blended-Actuality Headset For Car Operators
Honeywell photograph
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Lengthy-time protection contractor Honeywell has unveiled a brand new mixed-reality headset for army automobile operators to extend situational consciousness in hazardous situations.
The Military and Marine Corps reported 3,753 non-combat accidents leading to 123 service member deaths in fiscal years 2010 by means of 2019, based on a 2021 Authorities Accountability Workplace report. The Honeywell 360 Show, launched on Oct. 10, is designed to restrict these accidents and shield troopers by offering them an entire view of their environment whereas on the transfer, mentioned Ricky Freeman, Honeywell Aerospace’s president of protection and area.
“It permits from … an enclosed platform — your [Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles], these forms of land autos — the chance to simply successfully drive,” Freeman mentioned throughout an interview on the Affiliation of america Military’s annual assembly and exposition on Oct. 10.
“With a sure set of [360-degree] cameras and different mounted applied sciences, it provides you a real-time view of the world round you,” he mentioned. “And that is important: real-time view with out the occasional illness that one incurs when they’re in a digital actuality surroundings, that point lag between what the world exhibits and what your eyes see … we have eradicated that to close zero.”
Receiving feeds from quite a lot of sensors and exterior cameras, the head-mounted show supplies operators a 360-degree view of the surroundings. The show can combine visualization from a number of databases akin to terrain, visitors and climate, a Honeywell press launch mentioned.
Offering troopers the knowledge they want in real-time, the show requires minimal coaching earlier than working the system, Freeman mentioned.
“That provides the motive force extra consolation, extra time and capabilities, and fewer coaching as a result of it takes actually minutes to turn into adaptable to the surroundings,” he mentioned. “I did it myself personally, and inside three minutes I used to be working a slalom course.”
The show underwent in depth testing, together with “a whole bunch of demos by very senior Military leaders,” he added. The system may be arrange on virtually any floor automobile platform, a key functionality because the Military has named the Subsequent-Era Fight Car as one in all its six modernization priorities.
“It’s agnostic — we put it on the Hummer, you possibly can put it on really civilian automobiles in the event you actually wished to go that far,” he mentioned. “However so far as the fight autos, it covers the spectrum,” from MRAPs to next-gen autos, they usually can all profit from the aptitude, he added.
“If you happen to’re in a conflict zone, the very last thing you wish to do is stick your head out, as a result of you realize what which means,” he continued. “However the capability to remain beneath cowl, beneath armor your complete time — and most significantly, the dearth of fatigue that happens to the eyes on this digital actuality surroundings is one in all its keys. You’ll be able to drive for hours as you’d in a standard automobile; that is the important functionality there.”
The agnostic nature of the system will permit for the mixing of further capabilities sooner or later in addition to the potential of utilizing the Honeywell 360 Show on airborne platforms, Freeman mentioned.
“There are some future areas that we’re taking a look at that [work] within the related battlespace,” he mentioned. One is the power to designate a goal of curiosity and transmit info to a UAV for processing, he mentioned.
“There’s every kind of ways in which we will form the capability that this functionality brings in, and it is also agnostic to airborne platforms,” he mentioned. “There’s any variety of methods we see with the ability to use this … that creates that connectivity within the battlespace that’s going to be important within the joint all-domain command and management surroundings,” he mentioned.
Subjects: Rising Applied sciences, Fight Autos