Eyekon: Distributed Augmented Reality for Soldier Teams

The battlefield is a place of violence 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 are becoming a reality due, in part, to the U.S. Army’s 21st Century Land Warrior (LW) program. However, the current system does not provide a “head up” display capability like that provided by today’s avionics. When the soldier employs the weapon, he should see objects easily distinguishable as friendly or not, as well as enemy locations. The Eyekon project is an intelligent agent-based decision support system hosted on the soldier’s wearable computer. Eyekon will use the soldier’s private network 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. If you load a mud foot down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, somebody a lot more simply equipped – say with a stone ax – will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a vernier." --Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers