Six years ago, the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) decided that they had a new dream.
The agency wanted a system that would overlay digital tactical information
right over the top of the physical world. So, they created a program called
Urban Leader Tactical Response, Awareness and Visualization (ULTRA-Vis) to
develop a novel and sophisticated augmented reality system for use by soldiers.
Through half a decade and with the help of several military contractors, they
succeeded.
The program developed and
integrated a light-weight, low-power holographic see-through display with a
vision-enabled position and orientation tracking system. Using the ULTRA-Vis
system, a Soldier can visualize the location of other forces, vehicles, hazards
and aircraft in the local environment even when these are not visible to the
Soldier. The system can be also used to communicate to the Soldier a variety of
tactically significant information including imagery, navigation routes, and
alerts.
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