Microsoft HoloLens 2 AR Headsets in Production Phase with US Army
On March 31 2021, AREA member Microsoft announced that it has made a contract with to equip the United States Army with 120,000 Augmented Reality headsets based on the company’s HoloLens tech.
Microsoft will fulfil an order for 120,000 AR headsets for the Army based on their Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) design. The modified design upgrades the capabilities of the HoloLens 2 for the needs of soldiers in the field.
“The program delivers enhanced situational awareness, enabling information sharing and decision-making in a variety of scenarios,” says Microsoft’s Alex Kipman.
Microsoft says this announcement marks the transition from prototyping these designs to producing and rolling them out in the field. This is a huge step for Augmented Reality technology.
According to the US Army, the IVAS system is designed to streamline existing vision-enhancing and immersive training capabilities into a single platform.
“The suite of capabilities leverages existing high-resolution night, thermal, and Soldier-borne sensors integrated into a unified Heads Up Display to provide the improved situational awareness, target engagement, and informed decision-making necessary to achieve overmatch against current and future adversaries,” the US Army writes. “The system also leverages augmented reality and machine learning to enable a life-like mixed reality training environment so the Close Combat Force can rehearse before engaging any adversaries.”
Read further information on Microsoft’s Blog