Eyekon: augmented reality for battlefield soldiers

Abstract

The battlefield is a place of violence, chaos and ruled by uncertainty. Timely knowledge of what's happening around a soldier can mean the difference between life and death. The goals of an enhanced mobile infantry as expressed in Heinlein's timeless Starship Troopers is becoming a reality today through innovative progress being made by the U.S. Army's 21st Century Land Warrior (LW) program. However, the current system does not provide a "head up" display like the capability that today's avionics provides to fighter pilots. What is wanted is that when the soldier employs the weapon he sees objects easily distinguishable as friendly or not, as well as enemy locations. This work is aimed at developing smart icons that are superimposed on the video from a LW weapon sight. Eyekon is an intelligent agent-based decision support system hosted on the LW's wearable computer. Eyekon will use LW networked position reports to provide a perspective view in the weapon sight. This will naturally draw the warrior to the most desirable target. There are many performance and human factors issues to address before the concept can be used in lethal situations.