SOAR TECHNOLOGY, LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N221-032

Description

As the oceans become more crowded, navigational decision making and the sensemaking that precedes have become increasingly difficult. Unfortunately, attempts to improve decision making with additional sources of information typically fail to integrate and correlate this data. With the added complexity of new technologies and strategic drawdown of crew size as these technologies become more automated, the ability of watch standers to maintain critical situation awareness (SA) is tenuous, a situation exemplified by recent collisions of U.S. Navy ships with merchant vessels. To meet navigational challenges and advance the state of the art, SoarTech proposes Ship Tactical Augmented Reality for Bolstering User Contextual Knowledge (STARBUCK) based on prior work to address lost SA in drivers using vehicle automation, Driver’s Assistant for Intelligent SafetY (DAISY). SoarTech will adapt DAISY to this domain, leveraging our experience developing and fielding common operating picture displays using cognitive adaptive visualizations for the Navy, as well as experience using HMDs for VR and AR training solutions. The STARBUCK system will deliver 3-D decision aids on current AR hardware technologies (e.g., HoloLens) that synthesize information about the ship, environment, and operator’s attention to increase task accuracy, reduce response times, and increase overall global situation awareness.