Australian Researchers Test Future Soldier Technologies

A new facility in Melbourne will provide an immersive 360-degree Augmented Reality (AR) environment for scientists from Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG) seeking to assess new technologies for dismounted combatants.

The Enabled Soldier programme is aimed at progressing Australian research and building capabilities for the dismounted soldier through a research collaboration with its industry and academia.

The research team is looking to provide dismounted combatants with an integrated solution to overcome the current challenges they face.

The new AR dome will now allow Australian researchers to better assess and understand how new technologies will perform and their fitness for integration into a future soldier combat system.

The new AR facility will allow researchers to place a fully equipped soldier in the 360-degree virtual world with a link to a robotic test arena. Here in a controlled research environment, the solider will be able to command robots to perform battlefield tasks in real time and real space, offering a flexible alternative to time consuming and costlier traditional approaches, which require soldiers to be observed in the field.

The research team is working closely with Army counterparts in Diggerworks, the Army’s Dismounted Combat Programme and the Combat Training Centre in Townsville with the aim to accelerate promising concepts if they work, says team leader Tim Bussel.

“Our Australian dismounted soldiers are totally reliant on what they wear or carry into battle and, from a technology perspective, their kit is incredibly complex,” Bussel says. “Technology on its own does not mean military capability because it has to work seamlessly with everything else, so integration is the key.

A Future Soldier Capability Network has also been created with the aim to develop Australian-made military capabilities from the relatively immature technologies that exist today.