US Army considers adding ‘artificial intelligence' capability to IVAS

The US Army is interested in adding ‘artificial intelligence/machine learning' (AI/ML) software capabilities into Microsoft's militarised HoloLens 2 augmented reality (AR) system.

In mid-January the service issued a request for information asking companies to propose potential AI/ML contributions that they can make to the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS).

The service did not provide specific details about future IVAS upgrades in the document, but said that the company's feedback would be used for planning purposes and “various concepts may be examined based upon input provided”.

During the past several years, the service worked on IVAS with Microsoft under a middle-tier acquisition rapid prototyping contract, a pathway designed to accelerate capability maturation and have a technology ready for fielding in less than five years. The effort includes militarising the company's commercially available heads-up display and linking the goggles to Nett Warrior and One World Terrain, to provide troops with a capability that they could train with and use on the battlefield.

In mid-2021 the army opted to postpone fielding the device by nearly a year to make several hardware and software fixes before heading into production. If the programme stays on this revamped timeline, the service will conduct an operational test in May 2022 and reach the first unit-equipped milestone in September 2022.

IVAS Project Manager Colonel Troy Denomy spoke with Janes in October 2021 about what led to a programme reset and the needed fixes.

On the hardware side of things, the service is reducing the field-of-view from 80° down to 70°, and working to fix a humidity issue with one component. Software ‘reliability and stability' is another issue of concern and the army wants to get rid of “software bugs” that at times “crash” the system, Denomy said.