U.S. Army Mobile Augmented And Virtual Reality Training Systems For Handheld Ied Detectors

The University of Central Florida\u27s Institute for Simulation and Training (IST), and the U.S. Army\u27s Research Laboratory (ARL) have collaborated on the creation of a suite of next generation mobile augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) applications. Our focus for this ongoing effort is full spectrum hand-held, mobile simulation-based training for advanced IED detectors. IST developed game engine based VR trainers capable of fully immersing the Soldier Trainees on lowcost mobile devices. A very advanced handheld AR trainer can convincingly emulate the proper motion required to employ the dual sensor detector in high fidelity virtual environments representing potential real operational environments, even to the representation of soil characteristics. This paper will discuss recent advancements, both hardware and software oriented, that enable the rapid deployment of high-quality end AR/VR training Apps. In addition, this paper discusses real world challenges associated with tackling complex training applications with mobile hardware