Getting a good sense of your surroundings isn’t easy inside a windowless armored vehicle. Moving blindly into enemy fire is a serious concern.
Raytheon Co. subsidiary BBN Technologies is developing a new technology that will provide a three-dimensional model of the environment outside armored vehicles, providing greater situational awareness for the troops within.
BBN’s Ground X-Vehicle Technologies uses lidar data to create a 3D model of the environment and employs high-definition video to produce a detailed, natural rendering of the surroundings.
Additional sensors provide the precise location of incoming hostile fire and blue-force tracking systems, like the FBCB2, allow commanders to pinpoint the location of friendly forces on the battlefield.
“Our team is developing a virtual experience that gives the crews of armored military vehicles greater awareness of what’s going on outside the vehicle, while also reducing their vulnerability to attack,” said David Diller, GXV-T program manager for BBN. “We’re creating a three-dimensional model of the environment in real time that gives users views of their outside environment that would not normally be possible from inside the vehicle.”
BBN is based in Cambridge, Mass.
Filed Under: Aerospace + defense
