Rapid Imaging Technologies LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: AF191-010

Description

As USSOCOM continues to assess the future operating environment, implementing innovative solutions that promote situational awareness (SA) is of increasing importance. While situational awareness can be tied to a variety of data-types impacting a mission, for the purposes of this effort, situational awareness tied to geospatial intelligence will be the focus. When a warfighter enters an operating area or supports personnel within an environment, their geospatial situational awareness will be driven by prior mission preparation and the map tools they are leveraging – such as ATAK and WinTAK. However, solely relying on memory from mission preparation, ATAK or WinTAK maps, or a combination of the two, may not afford the warfighter with sufficient SA, particularly if additional data feeds such as live, airborne, full-motion-video (FMV), are being utilized. The addition of a FMV feed may provide valuable information, but if managing the additional feed causes cognitive-overload, the value of the additional information is negated. Due to this, it is important for warfighters to gain the valuable insights provided by multiple displays but do so in a way that allows them to understand all the data across all the displays – affording them optimal situational awareness. Situational Awareness is defined as “the perception of environmental elements with respect to time and/or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the future.” This definition offers three key components: perception, comprehension, and projection. An absence of any of these components significantly hinders a warfighter’s effectiveness. Without perception, a warfighter is missing valuable information within the operating environment. Without comprehension, a warfighter may perceive all the elements within the operating environment effectively but, due to high cognitive-load, struggle to comprehend all the data-sources appropriately. Without projection, a warfighter struggles to forecast into the future based on changing variables. The most common changing variable is time. As time passes, someone with optimal situational awareness should be able to project, with a reasonable amount of accuracy, how circumstances may change. Lacking this ability can be detrimental to a mission.