DARPA, the Pentagon’s mad-scientist division, has awarded Lockheed Martin $1m to develop “daylight-readable, see-through, low-profile, ergonomic” color video glasses. That’s a tall order, and Lockheed Martin will be working with Microvision to build it.
The Lockheed-Microvision deal is part of a US military project named Urban Leader Tactical Response, Awareness & Visualization (ULTRA-Vis). It’s intended to equip American combat troops not only with see-through video specs but also with a cunning “gesture recognition” interface allowing squad leaders to effectively scribble on the real world – for instance marking a door, and having the same mark show up in their teammates’ specs as well.
The US military has been investing in Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality for years, but hopefully whatever they come up with will eventually make it down to public consumer level.
via $1m for seethrough vidspecs in DARPA VR war-graffiti plan • The Register.
