Seeing Through the Enemy's Eyes

This paper discusses how Augmented Reality (AR) and game engines can be utilized to increase situational awareness both within and beyond the battlefield. It presents a combination of software and hardware that allow for forward deployed operational forces and ground force commanders to automatically collect, share, and process data within their environment. The sharing of data produces a virtual representation of a real environment between multiple users, so that a common operating picture can be generated and processed. The use of the AR headset not only provides a way to present the data in a heads-up, eyes-out approach, but allows for interaction within the synthetic environment. Through this virtual interaction, the troops are able to annotate areas and people, improving non-verbal communication among a group. Areas can be marked as a destination and people can be marked as enemies. The annotations and virtualized environmental information can then be processed together to determine lines of sight of enemies and paths of least visibility to a destination point for all individuals wearing the AR devices. This processed data is displayed back to the troops so that they can make quick and informed decisions.