HTX Labs wins SBIR Phase II

HTX Labs LLC recently received a SBIR Phase II awardassociated with their Phase I work with the U.S. Air Force. The fundingprovided in this Phase II award will be used to accelerate the development ofthe HTX EMPACT Virtual Reality (VR) platform, which the Air Force plans toleverage as a way to fast-track the creation and utilization of highlyimmersive VR simulations within their education and training programs.

The planned adaptation to EMPACT will allow militarypersonnel, experts and trainers to rapidly create immersive training contentand then systematically and objectively quantify the efficacy of VR-enabledtraining simulations – a technology that will allow benchmarking and time-lapseviews of the student’s progress and physical mastery of a prescribed set ofprotocols and procedures. This is a significant milestone in the corporatelearning and professional development industry because many training programsaren’t designed to directly analyze a student’s physical performance against ahighly experienced professional or an entire student population. As a way ofillustrating, the EMPACT platform will be able to measure multiple dimensionssuch as hand movement, reaction time, eye movement, user interactions, andmore, and then score the participant’s performance against the exemplar andcompare it to the performance of others.

In addition, the SBIR Phase II award will support thedevelopment of multi- modal VR learning that will include: a 1st-person viewwhere the student can ‘embody the expert’ to practice through mimicking withinVR, and a 3rd-person view where they are strictly observing the expert withinan immersive environment. The final modality offered will enable a trainedparticipant to fully embody the expert, without guidance, to perform theprocedure and be measured against the expert for competence and aptitude. HTXLabs also plans to incorporate a scoring rubric and an embedded 3D datavisualization component that will allow the Air Force leadership to analyzerobust datasets within the actual immersive environment.

“This is one of the many advantages of utilizing virtualreality for training, and will be the catalyst to an infinite number ofpossibilities for measuring the effectiveness of corporate learning anddevelopment programs,” commented Chris Verret, CTO of HTX Labs.

AFRL and AFWERX have partnered to streamline the SmallBusiness Innovation Research process in an attempt to speed up the experience,broaden the pool of potential applicants, and decrease bureaucratic overhead.Beginning in SBIR 18.2, and now in 19.1, the Air Force has begun offering 'special'SBIR topics that are faster, leaner, and open to a broader range ofinnovations.